{"id":3662,"date":"2023-06-27T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2023-06-02T09:33:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T08:33:55","slug":"virtuosic-craft-or-clerical-labour-the-rise-of-the-electronic-health-record-and-challenges-to-physicians-professional-identity-1950-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2023\/06\/27\/virtuosic-craft-or-clerical-labour-the-rise-of-the-electronic-health-record-and-challenges-to-physicians-professional-identity-1950-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtuosic Craft or Clerical Labour: The Rise of the Electronic Health Record and Challenges to Physicians\u2019 Professional Identity (1950\u20132022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article Summary by Lakshmi Krishnan and Michael J. Neuss<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the work of physicians? Are we historians, detectives, magicians, or educators? Or is our craft merely clerical work, our labor just data entry for other users\u2014both human and non-human, intelligent and artificially intelligent\u2014in non-clinical areas like finance and research? Physicians today express deep anxieties about the nature of their work, and often worry about how the electronic health record (EHR) impacts their professional identity. Our paper examines the history of such anxieties from the 1950s onwards, and the metaphors that physicians have used to describe their work. Computers have changed physicians\u2019 work in important ways, but anxieties about the computer-based patient record (eventually known as the EHR) express a deeper angst about physicians\u2019 privileged place in the medical hierarchy, and the apparent challenge to physicians\u2019 authority the computers have represented. Despite the ubiquity of flattering metaphors like the physician as detective, magician, or virtuoso, we argue that physicians\u2019 work is often much more mundane. The work is modest but essential\u2014less about feats of diagnostic brilliance\u2014and grounded more often in highly practiced and at times diligent (if repetitive) tasks.<\/p>\n

We were also pleased to share our work on two episodes of the podcast Bedside Rounds<\/em>, which can be accessed here:<\/p>\n