medical school personal statement for er scribe

The belief that having been a scribe improves a student’s ability to succeed in medical school has little scientific foundation in the literature beyond some reports on performance on standardized exams and clerkship grades. But to our knowledge this has not been reported elsewhere and the role that scribing experience plays in the evaluation by an acceptance committee is unclear. DeWitt and Harrison noted that a history of having been a scribe significantly increased (odds ratio 1.61) the likelihood of being accepted to one medical school. The perception that it improves their ability to gain acceptance to medical school has some support in the literature. Casual conversation with scribes reveals that they do this job not only for the money, but because they also believe it will either help them get into medical school or prepare them to be more successful once they get there. What is the educational impact of having been a scribe on a medical student? Scribe companies are explicit in that the “primary purpose of a scribe is to facilitate the provider’s workflow” and that “(m)edical providers are allowed to teach, but it would be on the medical provider’s own time and there should be no expectation on the part of the scribe”. One of us recently wrote a commentary describing these perceptions from the perspective of having been a scribe. And finally, they state they think scribing is good preparation for medical school. They often state that shadowing experiences, while important to application committees, are increasingly difficult to arrange. Our anecdotal observations in talking with them has been that they are overwhelmingly in their final years of college or have just recently graduated from college, and that many of them are in the process of applying to medical school. We have been using scribes in our Emergency Department since 2015 and currently employ about 25 scribes. The literature shows that the use of scribes can have significant positive impact on provider well-being, patient satisfaction, clinical efficiency, and revenue generation. This training includes information on medical terminology, medical physiology, and documentation elements. While the training can vary widely, scribes typically receive several dozen hours of preparation, generally from a company that recruits, trains, and then markets them to providers. While reports on the use of medical scribes date back to the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the ever-increasing demands upon provider time and increasing complexity of mandated documentation have resulted in a rapid expansion of the use of scribes over the last two decades. They cannot act independently but can document the previously determined clinician’s dictation and/or activities. Understanding the impact of a scribe experience may provide medical school admissions personnel a more thorough sense of the scribe’s strengths and likelihood of success in training, and should generate testable hypotheses for further studies into the learning processes of medical scribes.Īs defined by the Joint Commission, a medical scribe is an unlicensed person hired to enter information into the Electronic Health Record (EHR) or chart at the direction of a physician or other licensed practitioner. Through written surveys and semi-structured interviews, we found that scribes feel that their experience shaped their futures in medicine in two broad themes, specifically confirming their commitment to medicine (with subthemes of specialty choice, establishing mentorship, and exposure to difficult topics) and the essential skills of a physician (with subthemes of communication, professionalism, history and physical, terminology and jargon, and clinical reasoning). However, little data exists to justify those beliefs. Many aspiring healthcare providers become medical scribes during or immediately after college, believing it will provide them with helpful experience and increase their chances of gaining entrance into medical education.

The reasons for this growth have been well documented, with positive impacts on provider well-being, patient satisfaction, clinical efficiency, and revenue generation. Medical scribes have been utilized since the 1970s but have been in ever-increasing demand over the past 25 years.

Medical school personal statement for er scribe