Aarhus University, Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus, Denmark.
University of California, Irvine, Department of Informatics, 6099 Bren Hall, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Int J Med Inform. 2019 Mar;123:76-83. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.01.001. Epub 2019 Jan 3.
Increasing demand for more and better documentation as well as digitalization of healthcare entail shifts in competencies and roles of healthcare occupations and professions. As a result of this data-centric technological development, new kinds of work and occupations emerge of which medical scribes are an example. To investigate and provide a case of an emergent occupation focused on 'data work', we describe the emergence, growth and stabilization of medical scribes, outline their history and provide a literature overview.
We conducted a review of the literature on medical scribes in academic journals until 2017. These publications are categorized according to the country of study, medical specialization, method, focus, attitude to the use of medical scribes, and the reasons given for the use of medical scribes. We outline the history of the emergence of medical scribes and provide a summary of the existing research publications on medical scribes.
We identified 60 papers of which a majority are based on cases from the USA; conducted in emergency departments; based on quantitative methods; focus on economic feasibility and satisfaction; are positive towards the use of medical scribes; and link the use of medical scribes to the implementation of electronic health records (EHR). There is a distinct lack of research on medical scribes themselves and their interaction with physicians, patients, and EHR.
Medical scribes have emerged as a new data-work occupation as a response to increased demands for documentation and digitalization through EHRs. Research on medical scribes has hitherto focused on efficiency and economic feasibility of scribes, and there is a need to look into the interaction of medical scribes with physicians and patients as well as look at opportunities for redesign of EHR. More generally, there is a need to look beyond the most prominent professions such as physicians and nurses in discussions of digitization and datafication of healthcare, and investigate how new and previous tasks are (re)distributed between occupations and professions.
对医疗保健的更多更好文档记录以及数字化的需求增加，要求医疗职业和专业人员的能力和角色发生转变。由于这种以数据为中心的技术发展，出现了新的工作类型和职业，其中医疗抄写员就是一个例子。为了调查和提供一个专注于“数据工作”的新兴职业案例，我们描述了医疗抄写员的出现、发展和稳定过程，概述了他们的历史并提供了文献综述。
我们对截至 2017 年学术期刊上有关医疗抄写员的文献进行了综述。这些出版物根据研究国家、医学专业、方法、重点、对使用医疗抄写员的态度以及使用医疗抄写员的原因进行了分类。我们概述了医疗抄写员的出现历史，并对现有的关于医疗抄写员的研究出版物进行了总结。
我们确定了 60 篇论文，其中大多数基于来自美国的案例；在急诊室进行；基于定量方法；重点关注经济可行性和满意度；对使用医疗抄写员持积极态度；并将使用医疗抄写员与电子病历（EHR）的实施联系起来。关于医疗抄写员本身及其与医生、患者和 EHR 的交互作用的研究明显不足。
医疗抄写员已经作为一种新的数据工作职业出现，以应对通过 EHR 增加文档记录和数字化的需求。迄今为止，关于医疗抄写员的研究主要集中在抄写员的效率和经济可行性上，因此有必要研究医疗抄写员与医生和患者的交互作用，以及研究 EHR 的重新设计机会。更一般地说，在讨论医疗保健的数字化和数据化时，需要超越医生和护士等最突出的专业人员，研究新的和以前的任务是如何在职业和专业之间（重新）分配的。
