This has always confused me. There are no scribes in the hospital I work (a big, academic, tertiary care center in a big city), and I really don't see any need for them here either. Maybe there is more of a need at other hospitals in different population settings?
I think it definitely depends on the setting. There are scribes at pretty much every hospital in my area (and there are quite a few) but they are all in the ED. I did meet one scribe on the interview trail who worked on the floors - it was a new thing that their program was trying out. I think that, on the floors, the docs might have more time to write H&Ps, progress notes, discharge notes, and such.
In environments like the ED, where the patient will (hopefully) only be around for a few hours or less, there is pressure to see as many patients as you can in a short amount of time, and you really don't want to end up working on charts the next day or even a few days out ( = bad charting), scribes come in handy. Ideally, we allow charts to be completed accurately and fully in real-time, so that docs can focus on actually being doctors.
It sounds like you had a terrible experience as a scribe, sorry to hear that. I wouldn't trade my job as a scribe for anything else. I've gotten very close to the doctors I work with and have given me invaluable advice while working with them. I've received a lot of one-on-one time with my doctors and they've been doing a great job mentoring me as a "undergrad following a doctor around".
You are aware that you echoed everything he said right? You were just someone following them around and there's obviously nothing wrong with that.
I think what CaliGirl was getting at is Doctor Strange's comment that, regardless of your position, you will be an undergrad following a doctor around with no real skills to offer and that you will constantly just be an "extra" person in the room. At least in my experience as a scribe, this is definitely not the case. Most of us are undergrads, yes, but that isn't what defines us. We do in fact have an important skill set that allows the doctors to function more efficiently, and our presence is very much desired. We can elbow our way into the busy trauma room just as well as anyone else. This isn't to say that we are necessarily "important members of the healthcare team," or whatever, but we aren't just standing around with our thumbs up our proverbial asses.
That's odd, when I called human resources about any ER scribe employment or programs all they said was 'our charting is done electronically so the doctors enter it themselves'
It definitely depends on the setting and the situation. But again, the mere existence of an EMR doesn't negate the requirement for scribes - it tends to enhance it. More likely, the doctors in that group have just opted not to use scribes. We can be expensive.
Where I scribe we still use paper charting and then come back to our computers to enter lab orders, etc. We were on the verge to going electronic recently, but now it has been put off until next year. This is something I have noticed at other hospitals. While my shadowing so far has not been in the ER, other departments use electronic charting and it seems extremely time consuming to me.
This is how another scribe group in my area operates. I don't envy them...my handwriting is terrible.
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But yes, you are right. EMRs have a lot of potential, but they also create a whole new set of complex issues for medicine, one of them being the necessary complexity required for a computer program to address all of the potential issues inherent in medical practice. Combined with a workforce of doctors and other staff resistant to change, this can certainly create adoption issues - and rightly so. The whole idea was to make charting easier, safer, and more efficient....it seems a bit off that, while there have definitely been some great benefits as a result of EMR implementations, the sheer complexity of some systems, combined with competing requirements for time in environments like the ED, almost necessitates the existence of scribes just to allow doctors to maintain pre-implementation patient-per-hour rates.
