P105: Charting in the electronic medical record: Perspectives of Emergency Medicine residents

Abstract

Introduction: The literature reveals that residents spend significant amounts of time working with and charting in electronic medical records (EMR). As adoption of EMRs accelerates among emergency medicine (EM) departments, postgraduate programs will need to adapt curricula related to communication in the patient record. In order to make targeted changes, clinician-educators need a better understanding of how the documentation practices of trainees develop and change over residency, as well as the challenges they face in effectively charting. We gathered the perspectives of EM residents on data entry in the EMR to identify opportunities for such change. Methods: We recruited residents from all five years of the Royal College EM residency program at Queen's University and conducted focus groups from August to October 2018. Data collection was audio recorded and later transcribed. Line-by-line coding was performed independently by both AR and NP. A final codebook was validated by ZH. The codebook was then thematically analyzed to identify and characterize themes from the data. The study was approved by the Queen's University Health Sciences Research Ethics Board. Results: 15 EM residents participated. Groups discussed similar challenges with charting, including time constraints, ensuring sufficient, but appropriate detail, variable preceptor expectations, and an inability to draw diagrams. All residents noted formal teaching of the SOAP note framework during medical school and reported receiving an introductory EMR session. Groups highlighted the importance of feedback, especially from physicians with medicolegal experience. They also described more informal learning strategies, including receiving tips from preceptors during shifts and reading the notes of others. They also reported that changes in their documentation practices as junior and senior residents were largely due to a graduation of responsibility and medicolegal considerations. Conclusion: Our results suggest there is a lack of formal postgraduate training for EM residents with respect to documentation in the EMR with reliance on informal teaching and feedback. Future work should explore opportunities to address this gap with various educational strategies, including the development of specific objectives, application of consistent expectations, modelling of excellent chart notes in teaching, and instruction by preceptors with medicolegal experience.