EMRs

Many family practice colleagues have been complaining of the increased time they spend using EMRs, mainly entering data and reviewing incoming data. One experienced GP said that before the advent of EMRs he left the office at 5:30 p.m. daily. Now he leaves closer to 7:00 p.m.

In addition, patients have been complaining about the lack of eye contact and time spent on physical examinations during a visit to their GP.

So it is with interest that I note an article and an editorial from the December 2016 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, which show that for every hour of direct face time spent with a patient (and I suspect much of that time is actually spent with the doctor looking at the computer), physicians spent nearly 2 hours on EMRs.[1,2]

What can and should be done to retain and encourage a good patient-doctor relationship before Google Doc becomes the norm?
—Robert Love, MD


References

1.    Sinsky C, Colligan L, Li l, et al. Allocation of physician time in ambulatory practice: A time and motion study in 4 specialties. Ann Intern Med 2016;165:753-760.
2.    Hingle S. Electronic health records: An unfulfilled promise and a call to action. Ann Intern Med 2016;165:818-819.

Robert Love, MD. EMRs. BCMJ, Vol. 59, No. 1, January, February, 2017, Page(s) 10 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply