Physicians who experience stress related to the use of health information technology are twice as likely to experience burnout.
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Rebekah Gardner, MD, of Brown University in Providence, R.I., and her colleagues surveyed all 4,197 Rhode Island physicians in 2017 to learn how the use of electronic health records affected their practices and their job satisfaction.
Just over a quarter (25.0%) of 1,792 respondents reported burnout. Among electronic health record users (91% of respondents), 70% reported health IT-related stress (J Am Med Inform Assoc. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocy145).
“After adjustment, physicians reporting poor/marginal time for documentation had 2.8 times the odds of burnout (95% confidence interval, 2.0-4.1; P less than .0001) compared to those reporting sufficient time,” according to the researchers.
The team looked at three stress-related variables: whether the EHR adds to the frustration of one’s day; whether physicians felt they had sufficient time for documentation; and the amount of time spent on the EHR at home. Variables were measured on a four- or five-point scale depending on the question related to the specific stress variable.
Almost two-thirds (64.2%) of respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that EHRs add to the frustration of their day.
“It was the most commonly cited HIT-related stress measure in almost every specialty, with the highest prevalence among emergency physicians (77.6%),” the investigators wrote.
More than a third of physicians (37.7%) reported “moderately high” or “excessive” time spent on EHRs at home; this metric was the most commonly cited stress measure among pediatricians (63.6%).
Nearly half (46.4%) of physicians reported “poor” or “marginal” sufficiency of time for documentation.
“Presence of any 1 of the HIT-related stress measures was associated with approximately twice the odds of burnout among physician respondents,” Dr. Gardner and her colleagues noted, adding that “measuring and addressing HIT-related stress is an important step in reducing workforce burden and improving the care of our patients.”
To alleviate burnout, the authors recommended increased use of scribes, use of medical assistants to help create a more team-based documentation function, improved EHR training, providing more time during the day for documentation, and streamlining documentation expectations, with certain culture shifts needed in some cases (i.e., banning work-related email and clinical tasks for vacationing physicians).
SOURCE: Gardner R et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocy145.