ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2020
How Physicians Spend Their Work Time: an Ecological Momentary Assessment.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Healthcare Professionals' Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare-A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Pooled it
- A cognitive layer architecture to support large-language model performance in psychotherapy interactions.Nature medicine · 2026Trial
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- The rise of artificial intelligence in respiratory primary care and pulmonology: a scoping review.NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2026Article
- Clinical evaluation of MiADE: a natural language processing system for assisting structured diagnosis recording at the point of care.BMJ health & care informatics · 2026Article
- Empowering knowledge dissemination: a 5A model for health professionals in IVF health communication through short videos.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Protocol to examine the feasibility and acceptability of a randomized controlled trial of a chaplain-delivered compassion intervention to improve psychological safety among interprofessional healthcare teams.Pilot and feasibility studies · 2025Article
- Interprofessional team-based primary care practice and preventive cancer screening: evidence from Family Health Teams in Ontario, Canada.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2025Article
- The Role of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery: Opportunities and Challenges.Cureus · 2025Article
- Can We Help Our Physicians and Our Profession?Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2025Article
- The limitations of narrative medicine.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2025Article
- Addressing Bureaucratic Burdens on the Portuguese National Health Service: A Simplification Experience Aiming for Value-Based Healthcare.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- How Much More Time Neurologic Examination Adds to Outpatient Visits: A Study of Cross-Sectional Data.Neurology. Clinical practice · 2025Article
- Findings of the Resident Workload Using Mobile Application in Japan.JMA journal · 2025Article
- Development, Implementation, and Evaluation Methods for Dashboards in Health Care: Scoping Review.JMIR medical informatics · 2024Article
- The Co-Piloting Model for Using Artificial Intelligence Systems in Medicine: Implementing the Constrained-Disorder-Principle-Based Second-Generation System.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- A Clinician and Electronic Health Record Wearable Device Intervention to Increase Physical Activity in Patients With Obesity: Formative Qualitative Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- "A day in the life" - telemedicine in family medicine and its relationship with practicing physicians' satisfaction: a cross-sectional study.Israel journal of health policy research · 2024Article
- The extent of interruptions to primary care medical officers' consultations in the Western Cape.South African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLittle is known about how physicians spend their work time.
objectiveTo determine how physicians in outpatient care spend their time at work, using an innovative method: ecological momentary assessment (EMA).
designPhysician activity was measured via EMA, using a smartphone app.
participantsTwenty-eight practices across 16 US states. Sixty-one physicians: general internal medicine, family medicine, non-interventional cardiology, orthopedics. MAIN MEASURES: Proportions of time spent on 14 activities within 6 broad categories of work: direct patient care (including both face-to-face care and other patient care-related activities), electronic health record (EHR) input, administration, teaching/supervising, personal time, and other. KEY
resultsAfter excluding personal time, physicians spent 66.5% of their time on direct patient care (23.6% multitasking with use of the EHR and 42.9% without the EHR), 20.7% on EHR input alone, 7.7% on administrative activities, and 5.0% on other activities (0.6% using the EHR). In total, physicians spent 44.9% of their time on the EHR. LIMITATIONS: Unable to measure time spent at home on the EHR or other work tasks; participating physicians were not a random sample of US physicians.
conclusionsThe efficiency of highly trained professionals spending only two-thirds of their time on direct patient care may be questioned. EHR use continues to account for a large proportion of physician time. Further attempts should be made to redesign both EHRs and physician work processes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.