Impacts of human and digital scribes on improving physician wellness and reducing administrative burden: a scoping...

The rise in administrative burden on physicians is becoming increasingly recognised as a significant contributor to burnout and job dissatisfaction among primary care practitioners. Human scribes (HS) and digital/artificial intelligence scribes (DS) have emerged as potential tools to reduce clerical workload and improve physician well-being. There has been extensive research conducted on HS, and DS show promise but require validation across diverse healthcare settings. This scoping review aims to assess the effects of HS and DS in primary care settings to evaluate their impact on administrative work, job satisfaction, burnout and clinical operational efficiency.

This review will follow the Arksey and O'Malley framework with enhancements from Levac et al, along with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) reporting guidelines. A comprehensive search strategy was developed, including Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase and Scopus databases in June 2025 with an academic health sciences librarian. Database searches will be conducted between March and June 2026. The inclusion criteria consist of empirical research on licensed physicians in primary care settings that implement HS or DS systems and measure physician-related outcomes. Two researchers will review and extract data independently using Covidence. The results will be analysed through thematic methods followed by descriptive summarisation.

This review conducts an analysis of existing publications without needing ethical clearance. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and presented at academic conferences where possible. The research team will make supporting materials accessible via the Open Science Framework.

https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/T5BHY.