Adding Fuel to the Fires of Burnout
In September, Dr Christine Sinsky and colleagues published an article in Annals of Internal Medicine that examined how physicians in ambulatory care spend their time.[1] Given the expanding documentation requirements that have coincided with the emergence of electronic health records (EHRs) and new health initiatives, they expected to find that clinicians are spending more and more time on documentation. Affirming what many "in the trenches" have intuitively understood, they found that:
During the office day, physicians spent 27.0% of their total time on direct clinical face time with patients and 49.2% of their time on EHR and desk work. While in the examination room with patients, physicians spent 52.9% of the time on direct clinical face time and 37.0% on EHR and desk work. The 21 physicians who completed after-hours diaries reported 1 to 2 hours of after-hours work each night, devoted mostly to EHR tasks.
This is a massive amount of time spent staring at the computer screen. This is also a dramatic increase in computer time for physicians compared with the amounts reported in a study published in the Annals of Family Medicine just a decade ago.[2]
It's difficult for anyone to comprehend the staggering number of hours that today's totals will add up to over a career.
