The 5 reasons American doctors are dreaming of walking away from medicine

Technology is amazing, and the EMR is no exception. Gone are the days of hunting down old paper records, and access to patient-related data is at an all-time high. So what’s the problem? There are a few.

To start, as the one taking care of an individual patient, the quantity of data is unimportant—quality and relevance are key. Trying to find what you need in a bulky EMR that hasn’t been optimized for user experience is a battle.

Along the same lines, reading the notes of other providers is equally grueling. Such notes are filled with auto-populated information, and identifying human insight regarding the patient (if any exists) can be like finding a needle in a haystack. To compound matters, these notes are often copied from one encounter to the next, making the scavenger hunt a regular exercise.

Finally, writing your own notes, assuming you want them to be useful, takes time. Dictation and typing are required, and when repeated up to 30 times a day, the hours accumulate. It’s no wonder older physicians still pine for the days of pen and paper. It’s also no wonder that the use of the EMR is strongly associated with physician burnout.

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