Doctors using electronic medical records

juba2jive
Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:10:58 +0000

I’m a PA student on rotations right now. Trying to learn a new EMR system every month has been interesting…I’m a fan of EMR because I like technology and think it can minimize error if the staff is well trained and familiar with how to use it, but definitely know some older docs that have had a hard time adapting.

The hospital where I’m rotating right now has a charting system that is driving me crazy. All admission H+Ps/discharge summaries, meds, labs, and imaging are in the EMR but everything else (progress notes, orders, etc) are still in the paper charts (I think the progress notes get scanned into the EMR eventually). I have a hard time reading the majority of the doctors’ handwriting in the chart so I feel like I waste a lot of time deciphering what their last note said, and someone has to manually put the written orders into the computer for the nurses, which is just completely stupid. In contrast, the teaching hospital where I’ve spent the majority of my time only used EMR and orders went right to the nurses, which makes a lot more sense. It wasn’t EPIC, but still worked pretty well.

I agree about docs getting wrapped up in the computer instead of paying attention to the patient during the appointment. I worked in primary care for a while and while most of our docs had templates so they didn’t have to type as much, I think some still got caught up in typing instead of paying attention to what the patient was saying. However, I rotated with a specialty practice earlier this year that I thought had the best of both worlds - they used EMR but didn’t take laptops in the room. They would use Dragon Medical (speech recognition software) to dictate the history and the assessment and plan after seeing the patient, then clicked through templates for review of systems and physical exam. I thought this was really efficient, as they were used to dictation from the pre-EMR era and it seemed to minimize wasted time clicking between different screens or checking a million boxes.