Care-Centered Clinical Documentation in the Digital Environment: Solutions to Alleviate Burnout

With the exception of improving medication safety, nurses and other clinicians report dissatisfaction with the design and cumbersome processes of electronic documentation. Many clinicians feel they are compelled to first satisfy the demands of documentation in the clinical record. After caring for patients, many clinicians devote significant amounts of time to nonclinical activities, which often carry on into afterhours. This paper explores the relationship between clinical documentation, the electronic systems that support documentation, and clinician burnout, and provides recommendations for addressing these issues.