There's probably any number of excuses that people make to get out of training for new workplace IT systems, but “EMR training gave me the plague” is certainly a novel one. Something similar to that claim was made in a story in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers this week, in which an unnamed doctor said Royal Melbourne Hospital was “putting staff in danger in order to satisfy their own timeline” for the roll-out of the new Epic EMR, which is due to go live next month.

Royal Melbourne, the Royal Women's and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre are all rolling out Epic in a big bang implementation as part of the $124 million Parkville Precinct project, which is using Royal Children's Hospital's 2016 implementation as a template. The Epic emergency department module is live at RMH and planning and training for a May go-live for the full system in the other facilities was well underway when the pandemic struck.