Paperwork in Podiatry

[StBernardsRule]

Hello,

I was hoping some residents and physicians could tell me how bad the paperwork is in podiatry. I've read many articles and took a class on health policy and one issue that came up constantly with regards to primary care physicians is how terrible all the paperwork is.

For podiatry, is it generally better than being a general practitioner with regards to all the forms you need to fill out, or is it similar?

Thanks!

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[podiatrysurgery]

Very bad
65% of my day

 

[StBernardsRule]

What % of a given day would you say is spent dealing with paperwork?

 

[StBernardsRule]

Very bad
65% of my day

Ewwwwww.......... Thanks for letting me know that.

Can I get some more feedback with regards to this? Is this standard across the profession? I've heard paperwork takes up as much at 50% of the day for primary care doctors (MD's) and I was hoping podiatry would be better than this.

 

[heybrother]

You might be new to this subforum. We don't have a regular group of attending podiatrists who post here so you aren't going to get a diverse group of responses from multiple professionals. Your best bet would be to shadow a few podiatrists and discuss the issue with them - how much time they spend on paperwork and if they believe there's a trend. I have a pretty good feeling that the issue of time dedicated to paperwork has been a past survey question on Medscape so that might be another opportunity to see what doctors across a spectrum of medical specialties think and to compare to what you hear while shadowing. Last of all, this forum has a regular troll who runs a garbage website where he badmouths podiatry. Until you can recognize his posts you should just take everything you read around here with a grain of salt.

 

[dyk343]

As a general rule. Any specialty clinic is usually less paperwork than a primary care/family medicine clinic.

The better you chart the more you have to back yourself up in court. If its not in the notes it never happened in the eyes of a lawyer. Some people chart very little. Some are incredibly anal about their charting. It will differ from provider to provider.

I probably spend (as a 4th year student) 25-40% of my day charting. Its hard to quantify so that's my best range. Majority of my day is with a patient.

 

[Creflo]

Isn't this a resident/attending forum? Why are students replying here? Just a pet peeve.

I'll answer as a resident. In clinic, our residents will work a 3 hour shift, and see about 5-8 patients during that time, spending about 3 (quick post op ingrown nail note) to 15 (visit note with x ray findings plus write script plus work note for patient, etc.) minutes per patient visit. So I would say it averages 15 minutes with patient, doing x ray, dressing changes etc. equals about 8 minutes of paperwork. So that's about 1/3 of time doing paperwork in clinic setting, but this is as resident. I would say an attending would do more paperwork.

 

[Dommo]

cant just hire someone to do paper work all day instead?

 

[dtrack22]

Worked with a couple pods who hired a CMA to scribe. Followed them around and did all of their charting. The 2 docs in the group who used the scribe did little to no paperwork most days