Interns logging lots of hours learning the EHR—is that a good thing?

First-year resident physicians spend plenty of time actively using the EHR—enough time, in fact, to become proficient “power users” by January of the academic year, according to a study in the February edition of the Journal of Graduate Medical Education.

Lu Chen, MS, a medical student at New York Methodist Hospital, and colleagues concluded as much by tracking four-month usage data logged by 41 internal-medicine residents at that institution.

Defining active EHR usage time as more than 15 keystrokes, three mouse clicks or 1,700 “mouse miles” (pixels) per minute, the team found that their subjects spent 18,322 hours in more than 33,700 EHR sessions (which they termed “electronic patient record encounters,” or EPREs).  

On average, each intern spent 112 hours per month on 206 EPREs.

Interns spent more time in July compared to January (41 minutes versus 30 minutes per EPRE), and time spent on the EHR in January mirrored that of the previous May (30 minutes versus 29 minutes).

In their discussion, the authors speculate that the interns’ decreasing time spent with the EHR over the course of the study period may point to their growing familiarity with the EHR, built-in EHR efficiencies or a combination of these and other factors.

Chen et al. also cite a 2013 survey revealing that, nationally, residents tend to feel clinical documentation takes time away from education, patient care and even the motivation to provide high-quality care.

“This has been linked to reduced resident satisfaction and increased burnout,” they add. “Therefore, to address resident satisfaction and thus improve motivation to provide patient-centered quality care, reducing the time residents spend on clinical documentation should be a priority.”

The full study is available online.