Assessment Tools for Patient Notes in Medical Education: A Scoping Review

Physician proficiency in clinical encounter documentation is a universal expectation of medical education. However, deficiencies in note writing are frequently identified, which have implications for patient safety, health care quality, and cost. This study aimed to create a compendium of tools for educators' practical implementation or future research.

A scoping review was conducted using the Arksey and O'Malley framework. PubMed, Embase, Ovid All EBM Reviews, Web of Science, and MedEdPORTAL were searched for articles published from database inception to November 16, 2023, using the following search terms: documentation, note-writing, patient note, electronic health record note, entrustable professional activity 5 , and other terms. For each note-writing assessment tool, information on setting, section(s) of note that was assessed, tool properties, numbers and roles of note writers and graders, weight given, if used in grading, learner performance, and stakeholder satisfaction and feasibility was extracted and summarized.

A total of 5,257 articles were identified; 32 studies with unique tools were included in the review. Eleven studies (34.4%) were published since 2018. Twenty-two studies (68.8%) outlined creating an original assessment tool, whereas 10 (31.2%) assessed a curriculum intervention using a tool. Tools varied in length and complexity. None provided data on equity or fairness to student or resident note writers or about readability for patients. Note writers often had missing or incomplete documentation (mean [SD] total tool score of 60.3% [19.4%] averaged over 25 studies), often improving after intervention. Selected patient note assessment tool studies have been cited a mean (SD) of 6.3 (9.2) times. Approximately half of the tools (17 [53.1%]) or their accompanying articles were open access.

Diverse tools have been published to assess patient notes, often identifying deficiencies. This compendium may assist educators and researchers in improving patient care documentation.