Key takeaways:
- Time spent within the digital well being file exterior of labor hours is called “pajama time.”
- Pajama time and time spent within the EHR on unscheduled days have been decrease amongst pulmonary specialists.
SAN FRANCISCO — The typical time spent on digital well being data exterior work hours was smaller amongst pulmonary specialists vs. all medical subspecialists, in line with a poster on the American Thoracic Society Worldwide Convention.
Edwin Perez
“Pajama time is time spent exterior of labor hours within the EHR,” Edwin Perez, MD, resident at Thomas Jefferson College, instructed Healio.
Knowledge have been derived from Perez E, et al. Pulmonary physicians spend their “pajama time” within the EHR. Offered at: American Thoracic Society Worldwide Convention; Could 16-21, 2025; San Francisco.
“We all know that extra pajama time equals burnout,” he continued. “So, if we will discover one thing that the pulmonologists or procedural specialists are doing that’s making them extra environment friendly, then we will actually train our college and hopefully publish issues that may present that that is what works for others so we will restrict and cease burnout.”
In a cross-sectional research, Perez and colleagues evaluated 43 attending pulmonary specialists and 418 attending medical specialists (together with pulmonary specialists) from eight outpatient places of work at Thomas Jefferson College to check common pajama time between the 2 populations.
“There are some research that present that [primary care providers] spend much more time on the EHR in comparison with surgeons, so we thought if we will stretch out the surgeons and proceduralists like GI docs, pulmonologists and cardiologists, then maybe we might discover one thing related,” Perez instructed Healio.
This research occurred between October 2022 and September 2023, and specialists used the Epic EHR software program. Sign metrics from Epic allowed researchers to seek out EHR utilization time.
Primarily based on these metrics, pulmonary specialists had a median pajama time of 20.84 minutes, whereas all medical subspecialists had an extended common time at 29.76 minutes. Perez famous that testing for statistical significance was not carried out.
“Our speculation was that pulmonologist as a procedural specialist would spend much less time on the EHR, and we have been pleased to see that it was true,” Perez instructed Healio.
Reflecting on the above discovering, Perez stated this might imply that pulmonologists could also be doing one thing much like procedural specialists, akin to dot phrases, templates and receiving extra assist from superior apply suppliers.
Researchers additionally noticed that the group of all medical subspecialists vs. pulmonary specialists spent extra time within the EHR on unscheduled days (common, 48.8 minutes vs. 39.93 minutes).
Each teams had comparable common instances within the EHR exterior of seven a.m. to 7 p.m. (all medical specialists, 22.11 minutes vs. pulmonologists, 20.26 minutes) and out of doors of scheduled hours (39.23 minutes vs. 36.27 minutes).
“[In future studies,] we need to flesh out procedural vs. non-procedural and do some extra statistics and t-tests to see if there’s true significance,” Perez instructed Healio.
Along with pulmonary specialists being included within the group with all medical specialists, Perez stated one other research limitation was not being able to regulate for attendings’ degree of expertise.
“Maybe we will discover a method to ask how lengthy have you ever been an attending for or how lengthy have you ever been working with Epic, and use that in future analysis,” Perez instructed Healio.
For extra info:
Edwin Perez, MD, will be reached at exp130@jefferson.edu.
