Review article: Potential of medical scribes to allay the burden of documentation and enhance efficiency in Australian emergency departments

Abstract

The increasing burden of documentation experienced by doctors threatens the efficiency in EDs and increases the likelihood of documentation errors. Medical scribes afford the opportunity to allay this burden by removing a large component of the doctors' documentation task. Scribes have been embedded successfully in US EDs, and the effects have been mostly advantageous. The present paper provides a brief overview of the function of scribes and their potential contribution to Australian EDs.

Impact of Medical Scribes on Provider Efficiency in the Pediatric Emergency Department

“…To the best of our knowledge, this study obtained the largest collection of patient experience data pertaining to a medical scribe program . Similar to previous studies, this study revealed that patient experience was largely the same between patients who encountered a scribe and patients who did not .…”

Strategies to measure and improve emergency department performance: a scoping review

“…Four reviews examined interventions relating to models of care using support staff such as scribes and physician assistant roles in ED [8,18,[74][75][76]. A description of the characteristics for scribes and physician assistants interventions is provided in Table 7.…”

Re: Review article: Potential of medical scribes to allay the burden of documentation and enhance efficiency in Australian emergency departments

“…We read with interest the recent paper by Cabilan and Eley. 1 The authors broadly review the scribe literature and how it might relate to Australasia and are supportive of the concept. We agree that there is a fundamental and growing issue with the utilisation of emergency physicians for a large amount of data entry.…”