An interesting commentary (DI Rosenthal, A Verghese. NEJM 2016; 375: 1813-5) provides a closer glimpse into the meaning and nature of physicians’ work at this time.

Key points:

• Medical students and residents spend 40-50% of their day in front of a computer & much of the rest of their day on the phone (coordinating care).
• Time spent with patients “has remained stable over the past six decades.”
• Flipping through the electronic record before seeing patients is commonplace but can lead to a ‘framing bias.’
• “Our attention is so frequently diverted from the lives, bodies, and souls of the people entrusted to our care”…”despite all the rhetoric about ‘patient-centered care,’ the patient is not at the center of things.”
• The authors equate the digital representation of the patient as an ‘iPatient.’
• Physicians are “resentful of the time required to transcribe and translate information.”
• Higher satisfaction is associated with perceptions of higher quality of care.
• The authors advocate working on “rebuilding our practices and physical spaces to promote human connections that can sustain us — between physicians and patients, physicians and physicians, and physicians and nurses.”

My take: The authors provide a closer glimpse of the problem showing how our digital health has hindered meaningful interactions that go to the heart of medicine –to provide comfort and care.

Related blog posts:

• “Why Health Care Tech is Still So Bad” -NY Times | gutsandgrowth
• Taking a History: Man versus Computer | gutsandgrowth
• Aptly titled “The Cost of Technology” | gutsandgrowth
• Copy Forward: What Could Go Wrong? | gutsandgrowth
• Increased complexity or improper coding? | gutsandgrowth
• The future of gastrointestinal disease and symptom monitoring …

Neighborhood tree a few weeks ago