What I am reading….scribes, leadership & wellness

In the literature:

Dewitt D and Harrison LE. The Potential Impact of Scribes on Medical School Applicants and Medical Students with the New Clinical Documentation Guidelines. J Gen Intern Med. v33(11); 2018 Nov. 

This article details what the authors believe to be the clinical implication of the use of scribes on medical student education. 

On March 5th, 2018 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that students will be allowed to contribute meaningfully to patient documentation allowing the teaching physician to verify the medical student’s documentation, rather than, rewriting the work which creates a new opportunity for medical students. 

Scribing has become a popular way to earn money and gain clinical experience as a pre-medical student. This article argues it may have become an expected hidden prerequisite for applying to medical school, further, setting another unfair bar for medical school admission. 

The article further argues that scribes may now interfere with the new freedom medical students have to document and learn from their documentation. Scribe training provides experience on the appropriate use of medical language and the relative pertinence of information and might be teaching time better used with pre-clerkship medical students. 

In the press: 

Good Leaders Make Good Doctors, New York Times. 11/21/2019. 

This is an editorial written by an assistant professor of medicine and health care policy at Weil Cornell advocating for increased leadership training in medical education, as well as, selecting future physicians with leadership potential. The editorial cites the benefits of physician leadership in preventing burnout, improving patient outcomes, and professional satisfaction by improving hospital culture. They cite that physicians are happier when their bosses are also physicians. 

More on burnout: 

How Philadelphia medical schools are integrating wellness activities into the curriculum. Perelman School of Medicine has integrated yoganatomy- yoga while teaching anatomy. Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College holds a week of wellness activities for first-year students each fall, Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine offers art and writing classes, and Drexel University Collge of Medicine hosts weekly “wellness group” meetings for first and second-year students. Drexel also offers medical students unlimited sessions with a psychologist or a psychiatrist based on campus. The article further goes on to cite the numbers and background on medical student burnout.