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A Millennial Doctor’s Love-Hate
Relationship with EHRs
By MILLENNIAL DOCTOR, MD “Millennial Doctor is a storyteller who also happens to be a primary care physician
a few years into private practice. She offers a rare glimpse into the usually secret thoughts of a millennial doctor on life,
doctoring and wealth. To read more of Millennial Doctor’s work visit reflectionsofamillennialdoctor.com”
At the start of the transition to electronic health records
(EHRs), I was totally on board as one would expect of a
millennial doctor. I, along with my fellow millennials, grew
up alongside the internet. We can type with our eyes
closed, navigate pop-ups in a jiffy and intuitively know
how to manipulate electronic charts to serve our purposes.
But, I did find myself in a unique position in the
millennial doctor cohort—I am an ancient millennial, if
you will. Early on in my career, I remember
documenting in five-pound paper charts and trying to
decipher the illegible scribbles of specialists, too afraid
to call them for clarification.
As one of the first young doctors to face the transition
between paper charts and EHRs, I fully embraced their
benefits with open arms. Instead of handwriting labs on
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a carbon piece of paper and hoping the right labs would
get drawn somehow, I could electronically order the labs
I wanted and know they were input correctly. I could
actually read progress notes and consultations!
In contrast, many in the older generation of doctors
abhorred the transition to EHRs. They preferred dictation
to typing, would become furious with the never-ending
alerts and had no interest in setting up templates for their
own use. They prophesied doomsday predictions about
how this was the end of medicine as we knew it.
I would scoff at their resistance to learning how to
navigate these systems—this was clearly the wave of the
future! However, after watching the use of the electronic
medical record transform over time, I am coming to
realize I cast aside their concerns too quickly.
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