> The signatures of doctors who testified they never saw Sam — including one who was not in the hospital that night — accompany notes.
I'd bet 10 to 1 this is due to residents or fellows copy-pasting prior notes forward. An extremely common albeit rarely problematic practice that is nevertheless lazy and underpoliced.
As someone at an academic institution, this drives me insane. I mean, have some sort of pride in your work. Copy forward but make the necessary changes!!
As someone who’s worked on EHRs, I can tell you that doctors rely on “carry forward” and templated notes and other entry types.
They are fixated on fast and smooth workflow, both because they want the computer out of their face, they want software to help them jump through the ever growing number of mandatory hoops, and they are under serious pressure to keep their numbers high.
Doctors that I know don't necessarily mind carry forward notes if it is in a standard template, and it's been reviewed for accuracy. The doctors I know rightly hate when trainees (or occasionally but rarely other attendings) do either of these:
1. Carry forward non-templated notes that reuses another physician's prose with zero or near-zero updates as it invites mis-interpretation from colleagues.
2. Carry forward templated or non-templated information that clearly hasn't been reviewed, best indicated by signatures/names of physicians that had nothing to do with the note as in this article or dates that are clearly wrong.
And it's doubly-bad when it's non-templated notes with incorrect physician names and/or dates.
I'd bet 10 to 1 this is due to residents or fellows copy-pasting prior notes forward. An extremely common albeit rarely problematic practice that is nevertheless lazy and underpoliced.