Electronic Health Record Burnout in Surgery (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Physician burnout is a prominent component of the medical field defined as a chronic stress response with components of depersonalization, exhaustion, and a diminished sense of accomplishment. This study summarizes findings from a PubMed literature search that shows the significant contributors to electronic health record (HER)-related burnout in the surgical field may be documentation and clerical burdens, complex usability, electronic messaging and inbox, cognitive load, and time demands. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to characterize the significant contributors to EHR-related burnout in the surgical field to better provide a framework to create evidence-based strategies to promote the well-being of providers and high-quality patient care. METHODS A literature search of PubMed was completed in April of 2024 to include articles 20 years prior. Articles were filtered to English only and were filtered out based on the following exclusion criteria (1) not applicable to surgery, (2) not involving EHRs in the US, (3) not related to physician burnout. The topic of documentation, usability, time demands, and electronic messaging was recorded for each article. RESULTS Initially 207 articles were obtained. After filtering through articles title 48 remained after. Further filtering through abstracts produced 25 articles. Surgical specialties included general surgery, vascular, orthopedics, ENT, surgical oncology, and the surgical intensive care unit. Documentation was mentioned in 15 out of 25 articles, usability in 4 out of 25, time demands 16 out of 25, and electronic messaging in 8 out of 25 articles. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study highlight the significant impact of (EHR) on physician burnout within surgical specialties. The two main factors of the EHR contributing to burnout were documentation and time demands, as evidence by the literature.