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Comment by davycro | Hacker News Reader

I work in a family practice every other week as a requirement for medical school. I've noticed that EMRs are very disruptive to a doctors bedside manner. For every visit the doctor types notes into a laptop while the patient speaks to her. Communication is inhibited and the doctor struggles to maintain rapport with her patient.

I would love to see the patients EMR displayed on a screen so the patient could see what the doctor typed as he spoke. This would make the process collaborative instead of one sided. It would also be a great feedback mechanism where the patient could double check that his doctor understood what he just said.

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A doctor also might theorize about possible causes of the issue while trying not to implanting ideas of symptoms in the patients head. When I did computer repair, I was very careful not to put my own words in the clients vocabulary when I was still trying to gather information, as I wanted to keep from coloring their memory / experience. Same thing would apply here. Maybe a good compromise would be for the doc to summarize their notes at the end and ask for feedback.

For other readers, like me, who are not doctors, I will share that I have discovered that EMR means Electronic Medical Record.

My neurologist is relatively old-school -- he uses an EMR in the room to order scripts and lab works, however, he uses his time with me talking to me, and then enters records into his EMR in between appointments.

As such, I prefer visiting this guy (an older gentleman) versus a young, fresh out of school neuro in the same office, even though it's much, much easier for me to get into the younger neuro than my guy.

At least one of my wife's doctors does not type notes during the visit, but puts them into the computer immediately following. I think she keeps notes on paper while visiting.

My doctor sits with me near him and always has the ability for me to read what he is typing.

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