What's More Important: Charting Or Looking At Your Patient?

Overall, I think computer charting is nice. It offers a safe way of making sure you are giving the correct medicine, and correct dose, to the correct patient. In this way, it greatly reduces medicine errors. However, taking the time to chart, and chart accurately, takes away time that may be better served paying attention to your patient.

So, weighing the potential benefits against the potential risks is something that should be considered. But, in my humble opinion, other than the safety issue, the patient seems to take a back seat to charting.

Before computer charting, you had the option of charting in the room or charting after you were done. Some therapists preferred charting while doing a treatment. But, others deferred charting so that they could spend quality time with their patients. This is the option that I preferred.

As a kid, I was often in the hospital with asthma. There would be long periods of time when I had no visitors. Nurses were busy. And respiratory therapists only visited me every 4 hours to give me treatments. I got to know many respiratory therapists during the years my asthma remained poorly controlled. This would have been between 1980 and 1985.

My favorite therapists were those who gave me their undivided attention. Those therapists who looked at me, talked to me, and listened to me were my favorite therapists. On the contrary, I hated (for lack of a better word) those therapists whose heads were deep into their charting. They heeded me no attention. Their charting was more important than me, or so it seemed.

So, for the first 15 years of being an RT I never charted in the room. I promised myself, based on my personal experience, that my patient would always come first. This ended when computer charting came into place. Actually, it ended when we were forced to scan patients. Once this scanning mechanism was mandated, I was forced to chart in the room.

There are certainly advantages to scanning, as noted above. The security of knowing you have the right dose, medicine, and patient is handy. And, knowing your charting is done once you leave the room is nice.

But, this all comes at the expense of the patient. Some of our charting involves actually hunting through various options to find the options that you want to choose from. Sometimes this takes up to five and even ten minutes. So, by the time you are done, your treatment is done. And you spend very little time assessing and talking with your patient.

And I hate when this happens. Frankly, if I spend more than a minute in my chart I feel guilty. I would prefer to sit in a chair and banter with the patient, to get to know my patient. Some patients aren't very chatty. But, some patients love it when you watch TV with them, or banter with them, or simply chum with them. But this can't be done when your nose is in your computer. Thoughts?