Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Mar 2024)
The Experience of Medical Scribing: No Disparities Identified
Abstract
Benjamin H Levi,1,2 Ndifreke Ekpa,3 Andrea Lin,4 Candis Watts Smith,5 Rebecca L Volpe1 1Department of Humanities, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA; 2Department of Pediatrics, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA; 3University of Houston, HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, Houston, TX, USA; 4Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA; 5Department of Political Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USACorrespondence: Benjamin H Levi, 500 University Drive, Department of Humanities, H134, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, 17033, USA, Tel +1 717 531 8778, Email [email protected]: The chronic failure to significantly increase the number of underrepresented minorities (URM) in medicine requires that we look for new mechanisms for channelling URM students through pre-medical education and into medical school. One potential mechanism is medical scribing, which involves a person helping a physician engage in real-time documentation in the electronic medical record.Methods: As a precursor to evaluating this mechanism, this survey pilot study explored individuals’ experiences working as a medical scribe to look for any differences related to URM status. Of 248 scribes, 159 (64% response rate) completed an online survey. The survey was comprised of 11 items: demographics (4 items), role and length of time spent as a scribe (2 items), and experience working as a scribe (5 items).Results: The vast majority (> 80%) of participants reported that working as a medical scribe gave them useful insight into being a clinician, provided valuable mentoring, and reinforced their commitment to pursue a career in medicine. The experiences reported by scribes who identified as URM did not differ from those reported by their majority counterparts.Discussion: It remains to be seen whether medical scribing can serve as an effective pipeline for URM individuals to matriculate into medical school. But the present findings suggest that the experience of working as a medical scribe is a positive one for URM.Keywords: medical scribing, under-represented minorities, URMM, medical school, pipeline
