#HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCRIBE UPDATE#

Common conditions among pediatric inpatients include pneumonia, influenza, infections, and complications of chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes. Common conditions for which patients are admitted include myocardial infarction, or heart attack, congestive heart failure, stroke, pneumonia, and conditions that require surgical intervention. Since patients can be admitted to any department for any condition, hospitalists treat patients with conditions of all systems and therefore hospital scribes should be prepared to document a variety of ailments.

What types of conditions do hospital scribes document? The scribe hospital must be able to quickly review all this information entered into the chart by previous providers and relay it to the physician in an effective manner. This means that new patients usually take longer to assess and document. For example, a patient that came to the ED for chest pain and is being admitted for cardiac monitoring will already have labs, a chest x-ray, and multiple EKGs already completed. Most admitted patients were first treated in another department, typically the emergency department, so each patient’s chart will already have a lot of information in it regarding their current visit. Hospitalists provide general care to these patients as they are admitted and during their stay in the hospital.

#HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCRIBE UPDATE#

As the provider visits each of the patients under their care, the hospitalist scribe must be able to quickly update each patient’s chart with little time between patients.

Follow-ups include patients in varying stages of treatment. New patients are assessed first, and then follow-ups are performed. Depending on the day and the facility, hospitalists may see between 12 and 30 patients per shift. What does a scribe do in a hospital?Ī hospital scribe is usually assigned to one medical provider for a workday with each shift ranging from 8-12 hours.

So hospital scribes must be well-versed in terminology from an array of medical specialties. For example, a patient admitted for neurological observation after a stroke will require different providers than a patient admitted for orthopedic surgery to correct a broken hip. This field differs from other specialties because each patient will have a unique care team depending on what condition they are being treated for. Hospitalists work together to admit patients to the hospital and manage all of the inpatients.

Hospitalists must carefully coordinate complex care plans for several patients, so their medical scribes must be skilled at organizing and keeping track of a lot of information. Hospitalists oversee each admitted patient’s healthcare team, which is composed of a different variety of specialists for each patient. Hospitalists provide general care to hospitalized inpatients from their admission to the hospital until their discharge home. A hospital scribe or hospitalist scribe assists medical providers with their documentation.

Hospital medical scribe