It’s rare on the wards that students are given access to their own logins to access patient notes. It is difficult for undergraduate co-ordinators to keep up-to-date records with students often moving between trusts on short placements. NHS Connecting for Health has released draft guidance on this.
Junior doctors are often forced to give their own log-in details to students -a practice which is illegal. There are commonly different combinations of usernames and passwords for different systems e.g. imaging, pathology. Students are often required to perform tasks which require these details. The draft guidance suggests trusts issue students with smart cards. These smart cards could also other relevant information such as Blood Borne Virus status.
Perhaps the most sensible way forward would be moving the job of providing student smart cards from the NHS trusts themselves to the medical schools. Then the trusts could activate smart cards for the duration of placements, and logistical difficulties of returning cards and fetching new ones could be avoided. Like any other IT system, the main problem would be what happened in the event of system failure.
- Dom
