New research from The University of Texas at Arlington suggests that introducing electronic health record training earlier in nurse practitioner programs could help address a significant challenge facing the field—burnout among experienced clinicians who supervise and train future nurse practitioners, according to a Jul. 14 report.
Researchers said students who are more familiar with electronic health records require less on-the-job instruction, which helps reduce technology-related stress for the experienced clinicians who train them. An electronic health record, or EHR, is a digital version of a patient's comprehensive medical history that can be shared with key members of the healthcare team across settings. EHRs are designed to improve efficiency and accuracy in patient care.
Dr. Winegar coauthored the study with Mari Tietze, the Myrna R. Pickard Endowed Professor at UTA's College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Dr. Tietze is also project lead for the academic EHR used by students at UTA. The findings were published in The Nurse Practitioner.
The study tracked 121 graduate students enrolled in two UTA courses—Family I and Family II—and found that integrating electronic health record training into coursework led to moderate overall satisfaction with a 3.7 out of 5 rating and increased confidence in clinical readiness. Students with prior exposure to electronic health records reported significantly stronger perceptions of preparedness for clinical training.
"We feel like we're bringing the students into the real world as opposed to having their first experience with electronic health records be after graduation," said Tietze, who also serves as UTA's interim chief nurse officer and chair of graduate nursing.
Reducing technology-related stress is critical because burnout impacts one in five nursing students globally, and one in three nurses leave their first position within the first year, according to Tietze. She said preparing students for their profession starts early and pointed to emerging tools like ambient listening—where AI systems capture patient-provider conversations—as evidence expectations are changing quickly.
The study found that Family II students with prior exposure consistently reported higher confidence while Family I students using EHRs for the first time reported lower preparedness and greater frustration.
"We assumed that when students got to their clinical site, that's where they were going to gain their knowledge of how to use an electronic health record. Well, guess what? That doesn't happen all the time," Tietze said. "It depends on the clinic, it depends on the preceptor. It was not a consistent process." Winegar added, "The preceptor may be seeing patients and then later putting in all the orders, so the student may not see that." Future research will focus on larger groups of students.
