Assessing Medical Students’ Access to Electronic Medical Records in Jordanian Public Universities

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study is to evaluate the extent and quality of EHR access for clinical-year students at public universities in Jordan, as well as the institutional and systemic barriers they face.

Methods: A study was performed by applying a questionnaire on 401 medical students in the clinical years from six public universities in Jordan 2024-2025. A self-developed tool that assesses EHR accessibility and credentialing and student perceptions was therefore used. SPSS v26 was used to analyze data.  Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were employed to describe data.

Results: Most students (95.5%) accessed medical records, but only 2.5% had the official credentialing to cover all hospitals where they rotate. About 16% could only read and 4% could get full access. There were notable links between using EHR and year of the study (p = 0.017), university (p = 0.004), and availability of computers (p < 0.001). Most of the students (84.1%) found that accessing the EHR was useful. However, 76% of students indicated that they did not receive official credentials to access the system and 96% of students indicated that the use of the EHR was not properly supervised or functional.

Conclusions: Even though a lot of informal use of EHRs takes place, medical students in Jordan do not get formal training or credentialing. We therefore propose that, there is an urgent need to a set out structured national policies and institutional reforms to ensure an equitable, supervised and meaningful access to EHRs in under graduate medical education.