Like their American counterparts, British doctors fear giving patients too much access to their electronic health records, according to a new survey.
The survey was conducted by a non-profit group called the Medical Protection Society, which provides professional indemnity coverage to doctors, dentists and health professionals globally.
Researchers there found that 75 percent of patients responding to the survey want medical records to be written in “simple language” that patients can read without help, according to the British Journal of Healthcare Computing.
Doctors, on the other hand, aren’t so keen on the idea, with only 21 percent agreeing that medical records should be written in this manner. Moreover, 84 percent of physician respondents were afraid that sharing data would complicate their relationship with patients and potentially turn out to be a time sink.
It’s not so much that doctors fear sharing information with patients. Physicians seemed to agree that it’s good when patients understand their records and can make better decisions about their own care.
But it seems that doctors and patients have different expectations as to how to manage that sharing. While patients want readable records, physicians worry that it’ll be difficult to write records accurately if they have to avoid clinical terms, jargon, acronyms and shorthand that might confuse patients.
In fact, they believe that writing a record in non-professional English might cause those records to grow considerably longer while offering less value to other professionals, the BJHC reports.
To avoid such problems, it will be important to introduce comprehensive educational support for both doctors and patients, the researchers concluded.
Asking doctors to share their findings with patients is emblematic of a major shift that has been going on in medicine. Doctors, without much direct warning, have been moved from diagnosticians to being knowledge workers. To an extent, it’s similar to the change in the workplace when scientists went from being solo researchers to working in teams. In that case, they had the visible example of the Manhattan Project.
In medicine, there are many examples, but few that clearly spell out the new role for physicians. As a result, when they are called on to prepare data for sharing with others than a few known peers, it is most uncomfortable. Who can blame them?
I also suspect this is what motivates some of the complaints about EHRs. Placing things in an EHR not only requires putting entries in a structured format, but also writing it to be used by others you may not know. — That does not excuse, of course, poorly designed systems.
If we regard doctors, etc., as not only responsible for diagnosis, treatment, but also responsible for building a knowledge set both for and beyond their patients, maybe that would aid in understanding why creating a record for patients to read is also part of the job.
I find myself imagining a similar situation occurring decades ago when software engineers were being pressured to involve users in the design process. Designers and engineers have said (and still say) that users “don’t know what they want” when pressured to involve them in the development process. “You couldn’t possibly understand how this stuff works so just trust me to do it right by you” is the thought that comes to mind. I think that perhaps a similar thought is floating around in the heads of some doctors who are reluctant to make a patient’s health information available to them.
Andrew,
Interesting perspective. I think there’s some similarities, but I think it goes a little deeper. Many patients can gain a deep understanding of their condition. I recently heard someone call them micro experts. I think this is the case and many doctors underestimate their abilities.