Surgery Resident Time Consumed by the Electronic Health Record

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Surgical Education
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Electronic Health Records (EHR) significantly impact surgical residents' clinical availability.
• Objective data on EHR usage patterns among surgical residents is currently limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To objectively assess and quantify the time surgical residents spend using EHR systems.
• To compare EHR usage across different resident PGY levels and surgical specialties.

Main Methods:

• Collected active EHR usage data from 70 surgical residents over one year.
• Defined active EHR usage by keystrokes, mouse clicks, and mouse movement per minute.
• Compared usage data among interns, juniors, seniors, and various specialties.

Main Results:

• Interns spent more daily EHR time than juniors (134.5 vs 105.5 min) and juniors more than seniors (105.5 vs 78.7 min).
• Interns and juniors spent more time per patient on chart review, documentation, and orders compared to seniors.
• General Surgery residents spent more time on EHR tasks than Orthopedic residents but less than OB/GYN residents.

Conclusions:

• This study provides the first objective data on surgical resident EHR utilization.
• Findings suggest opportunities for optimizing EHR training and usage for surgical residents.