Stop Physician Burnout: The Hidden Threat of AI-Powered Note-Taking Software

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AI-powered note-taking software offers short-term stress relief for doctors, but doctors’ stress may be driven by employers’ demands to increase patient intake limits.

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AI notes will provide a huge short-term relief for stressed clinicians. They can effectively disconnect note quality from data entry skills. Unfortunately, once the stress of documentation is removed, things will only get worse.

The burden of EMR and digital documentation

The first EMR software was implemented in the early 2000s. The increased stress of digital documentation caused physician burnout rates to increase by 20%. Every study since then has identified documentation burden as the leading cause of physician burnout. EMR has destroyed the physician-patient relationship and physician quality of life.

Studies have shown that physicians spend twice as much time charting than they do face-to-face with patients! Many physicians are forced to complete charts at home after the kids have gone to bed, which has led to the term “pajama time” becoming popular.

A breakthrough in artificial intelligence

Fortunately, artificial intelligence is very good at creating high-quality notes about a doctor’s visit.

Large language model software like ChatGPT can listen to a patient visit and do an excellent job of writing a note remarkably similar to what you would type. Training involves absorbing millions of chart notes written by physicians in your specialty.

We have had coaching clients brought to tears as they watched their chart notes magically appear in the time it takes to walk from the exam room to their office. They are quickly and easily accessible, requiring only a touch here and there to be final.

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This software can reduce your “total time spent charting” by up to 50%. Imagine having the software take notes at acceptable quality in half the time it takes you now. How would that feel? How would it feel to leave the office 20 minutes after the last patient? How would it feel to never have to chart at home again?

This is a real breakthrough. I encourage you to be an early adopter. If your organization is launching an AI note-taking pilot, join the study group and get started.

If your company isn’t implementing AI documentation, get one of the publicly available programs and use it as an alternative to copying and pasting instead of typing notes. I predict these programs will reach 100% adoption very quickly. They disconnect the quality of your notes from your data entry skills.

Why will burnout relief be short-lived?

With half the time to document, how long will it take for your employer to increase patient limits? When I ask this question to a live audience, the average answer is, “10 minutes.”

In this new reality of high patient volume, we can look back on the burden of paperwork as a blessing. Now you don’t see any more patients because you know the encounter isn’t over until you finish the paperwork. The prospect of more work in the chart keeps you from finishing another four or five patients.

What happens when we remove that throttle from patient flow? What happens when you’re asked to see four, five… or ten more patients per shift?

What will become the new major stressor that will replace the burden of documentation? All of our clinical skills are draining, and we already recognize compassion fatigue, fatigue, and decision fatigue in physicians.

Burnout is the result of depletion of physical, emotional, and spiritual energy accounts. If we remove the task of charting, what cognitive barrier do we breach with more patients? How will burnout change in this unfamiliar environment? The implementation of AI note-taking software is inevitable. The increase in patient visits and RVUs is inevitable. Burnout will change because of this implementation. My only concern is how physicians will be able to cope with this new workload.