By the EHRA Clinician Experience Workgroup

EHR utilization places a number of burdens on clinicians that can impact decision-making, workflow and satisfaction. This has been confirmed by recent studies, including one published earlier this year by the Journal of Biomedical Informatics which found that clinicians face numerous cognitive demands when using EHRs. The study concluded that the management of those demands ultimately limits clinicians’ agency to work individually and collaboratively while failing to help them develop awareness of, or reason about, the big picture or their patients’ current and future states, including effects of potential treatments. 

A study in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) found that when goal-based decision-making, sense-making, and agency/autonomy are overlooked in EHR design, it results in increased cognitive load, emotional distress, and unfulfilling workplace environments. And a study from Mayo Clinic and the American Medical Association (AMA) and published in Mayo Clinical Proceedings, gave EHR usability a grade of F, which is “markedly lower” than for most other technologies. Researchers further noted a strong relationship between usability and risk for physician burnout.