This is something I don't understand. I'm a medical student, and the amount of time I've seen wasted watching older physicians type notes is staggering. Just have them dictate the notes and hire a secretary. Perhaps for legal/liability reasons doctors need to write their own notes but it's just such a waste of time, and we pay a lot for it.
Do we really though? I'm assuming a doctor is a salaried position so the more busy work they get the more hours they work? Doesn't this mean their time becomes less valuable?
I used to work at a medical lab and there were transcriptionists, billing dept, a dept. for quality assurance of every report a doctor wrote, customer service, etc. Hospitals have all of that plus nurses (RNs, CNAs, etc.), physician assistants, and probably many others.
Part of the problem is how much paperwork/procedures/diagnostic reporting is legally mandated to be done by doctors. The other part is...money. Businesses want to/need to squeeze as much money out of the doctors and that requires seeing as many patients as possible.
Are you referring to:
> In the mean time, I field 12 phone calls from ED, GP and other units. … I get called four more times between midnight and 6am.
These are clinical calls: the other units need information about previous treatment, or clarification about current treatment, or updated instructions due to a change in conditions.
E.g.
> Ring, ring
> Hello, this is the Levi residence, Dr. Levi speaking
> Hello Dr, patient XXX's vitals have changed/is reporting discomfort, do you want to change treatment?
> Yes, administer X ccs of Drugaline and call back if their situation doesn't improve in 2 hours
> OK, thank you Dr
A tremendous amount of stuff that normally only doctors do can be done by a nurse practitioner, and since it's much easier to train them, (because they don't need as much schooling) there are far more of them.
Basically give them the "easy" stuff and reserve the harder stuff for the Dr. Or have a Dr. consulting for a team of nurse practitioners and they go to him with questions and summary.