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- Page navigation anchor for GPs spend 14% of their session time documenting consultation notes and updating electronic health recordsGPs spend 14% of their session time documenting consultation notes and updating electronic health records
During a recent morning surgery, I wondered how much time could be saved if I did not have to make notes that I would feel confident defending in court after every consultation. I searched the literature for examples of UK GP consultations and found Sinnott et al.’s1 paper titled ‘Identifying how GPs spend their time and the obstacles they face: a mixed-methods study’. This excellent study, where the authors observed over 238 hours of GP session time with 61 GPs at 28 NHS practices in England from 2018-19, provided many insights into how GPs spend their time.
The authors recorded time spent ‘documenting/updating electronic health record’ (EHR) but grouped this activity with other ‘direct care’ tasks (see box 1 in Sinnott et al.). I wrote to Dr Sinnott enquiring if the time spent just ‘documenting/updating electronic health record’ was available and they were kind enough to retrieve this information:
“The total time spent documenting/updating EHRs was 34:13:40 (h:m:s). But after removing those documenting/updating EHR tasks that were themselves related to interruptions, the adjusted time spent documenting/updating EHRs was 34:08:58. Time spent on direct-care tasks was 172:24:14, meaning documenting/updating EHRs took approx. 19.8% of direct care time.”
This would equate to approximately 14.4% of total GP time observed (34:13:40/238:04). When adjusting for time spent mu...
Competing Interests: None declared.