Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Background: With the pandemic, there is renewed interest in clinical informatics. Clinical informatics is the study of using information and technology to improve patient care. The United States implemented the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act to increase adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). In anesthesiology, there are unique benefits of using EHRs. This has led to the creation of an anesthesia informatics sub-specialization. There are many ways to teach clinical informatics; how should we be teaching physicians? In Canada, there is some teaching of clinical informatics teaching objectives in medical school, family medicine, and emergency medicine. There is currently no clinical informatics teaching in Anesthesiology. Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to understand what skills anesthesiologists have in clinical informatics. Secondary objectives are to understand the attitudes and perspectives of anesthesiologists in this area, and where there are gaps in knowledge. Methods: This will be a study conducted on anesthesiologists and residents at the London Health Sciences Centre. Ethics approval will be obtained from the University of Victoria, and the Lawson Research Institute. The first part will be a web-based questionnaire based on existing clinical informatics teaching objectives that will be adapted to the Canadian and anesthesiology contexts. The second part is an interview to assess current attitudes and perceptions of clinical informatics in the Canadian anesthesiology training. Significance and Implications: It is important to understand current informatics training in anesthesiologists to improve patient safety, research and maximize the potential use in this new era of healthcare.