Deficiencies in electronic medical record inpatient list capabilities negatively impact patient safety, resident education, and wellness.
Poor usability results in clinicians spending considerable time working with electronic health records (EHR). Following a change in EHR vendors, residents in 1 orthopedics department were no longer able to automate a pre-populated inpatient list from the EHR; instead, they were required to manually transfer patient information from the EHR to another program, such as Word, prior to rounding and several times throughout the day. Residents were surveyed about the impact of this change on their education, wellness, and patient safety. Interns reported spending an average of 83 minutes per day using the automated list compared to 196 minutes per day with the manual list. Residents in all years reported this change negatively impacted their sleep and education and posed a risk to patient safety.