Yesterday was the second week in our electronic health record course here. I left that class feeling really energized and thought it was worth sharing here.

The course is exploring electronic health records, what they are, how they work, how an EHR is different from an EMR or a PHR, and then we’ll have some hands on experience with an actual system. The group we have in this particular course are really engaging in dialogue. Today we had some great discussion about what future roles might emerge.

One thing that’s become clear to me is that when we better understand something, we’re in a much better position to poke the box and see what we come up with. We identified several things that have to be done in an electronic record environment that medical transcriptionists are very skilled at, if they only have the understanding of the EHR and how it works.

As the saying goes, knowledge is power. There is some amount of power in understanding this stuff. Perhaps even more than power is the relief from the fear we are seeing in the industry right now about how this will have such a huge impact on our industry. There’s no question things are changing. Still I happen to think by exploring how things work and really thinking through the work flow and our skill set, we can come up with some really great options for the future.

If you haven’t signed up for this class, I hope you will. For now through the month of May, I’ve decided to leave the pricing the same at the early discounted rate. It’s important enough that I want as many MTs who are interested to take advantage of the lower pricing. Next week, we will be in the third week of the course. If you want to join this group, you can watch the videos that have been recorded for the first two weeks and join us next week. You can also do the course at your own pace as we are recording all of the presentations and they are generally up on the site by the next day.

Let’s stop letting the “fear” of the electronic record paralyze us. Let’s get out there, learn about it, and make it work for us! Hopefully some of the current students will drop in here today and let you know what they think so far (yes, guys, that is a hint! :) )

How about it? What’s holding you back from poking this box for yourself?