When it comes to burnout, it’s too easy to just blame technology

A recent Health Affairs study of “zero burnout” primary care practices found that satisfaction with the electronic health record (EHR) was not a determinant of clinician burnout level. This RAND study highlighted poor EHR usability as a key element leading to widespread physician dissatisfaction. I wanted a community-based program that trained strong, well rounded primary care physicians and I wanted a program whose clinic utilized an EHR. The EHR can be perceived as the problem if physicians aren’t comfortable moving throughout the user interface or if it’s difficult to reach out for IT support. If physicians have little say in how their local EHR is deployed, the technology may take the blame. According to the RAND study a decade ago, “physicians are more satisfied when they perceive that they are meeting their patients’ needs by delivering high quality care—and dissatisfied when they perceive barriers to delivering high quality care.” And that “it may be useful to view physician dissatisfaction, when it is caused by perceived quality problems, as an indicator of potential delivery system dysfunction.”