Katherine J Walker

Scribes in an Australian private emergency department: A description of physician productivity

The study aims to determine if trained scribes in an Australian ED can assist emergency physicians (EPs) to work with increased productivity.

Accuracy of electrocardiogram interpretation improves with emergency medicine training

Objective:  To assess whether electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation accuracy improves with advancing years of emergency medicine training.

Timed Up and Go test is not useful as a discharge risk screening tool

Objective:  To determine whether the ‘Timed Up and Go’ (TUG) test is a useful test for predicting re‐attendance at an ED, emergency hospital admission or death within 90 days in elderly patients discharged from the ED.

Medical scribes in emergency medicine produce financially significant productivity gains for some, but not all emergency physicians.

The present study aims to determine if a scribe in an Australian ED can assist emergency physicians to work with increased productivity and to investigate when and where to allocate a scribe and to whom.

An economic evaluation of the costs of training a medical scribe to work in Emergency Medicine

Objective To undertake a cost analysis of training medical scribes in an ED. Methods This was a pilot, observational, single-centre study at Cabrini ED, Melbourne, Australia, studying the costs of initiating a scribe programme from the perspective of the hospital and Australian Health sector. Recruitment and training occurred between August 2015 and February 2016 and comprised of a prework course (1 month), prework training sessions and clinical training shifts for scribe trainees (2–4 months, one shift per week) who were trained by emergency physicians. Costs of start-up, recruitment, administration, preclinical training, clinical training shifts and productivity changes for trainers were calculated. Results 10 trainees were recruited to the prework course, 9 finished, 6 were offered clinical training after simulation assessment, 5 achieved competency. Scribes required clinical training ranging from 68 to 118 hours to become competent after initial classroom training. Medical students (2) required 7 shifts to become competent, premedical students (3) 8–16 shifts, while a trainee from an alternative background did not achieve competency. Based on a scribe salary of US

Medical scribes have no impact on the patient experience of an emergency department

15.91/hour (including 25% on-costs) plus shift loadings, costs were: recruitment and start-up US

Choosing public or private emergency departments in Australia

3111, education US

Emergency consultants value medical scribes and most prefer to work with them, a few would rather not: a qualitative Australian study

1257, administration US

Feasibility evaluation of a pilot scribe-training program in an Australian emergency department*

866 and clinical shift costs US

The 9-Item Physician Documentation Quality Instrument (PDQI-9) score is not useful in evaluating EMR (scribe) note quality in Emergency Medicine

1137 (overall cost US