Photo Credit: Andrey Popov

Female surgeons spend more time documenting patient encounters and write longer notes in electronic health record (EHR) systems than male surgeons, according to a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers investigated gender differences in EHR usage patterns among 224 attending surgeons with 222,529 patient encounters in the outpatient setting during 2022. The researchers found that male surgeons had more median appointments per month (78.3 versus 57.8) and completed more medical records per month versus female surgeons (43.0 vs 29.1). Overall, there was no difference seen in median time spent in the EHR system per month (664.1 vs 635.0 minutes). Male surgeons had a higher number of median days logged in per month (17.7 vs 15.7 days), but female surgeons spent more time logged into the system both outside of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (36.4 vs 14.1 minutes/month) and outside of scheduled clinic hours (134.8 versus 105.2 minutes/month). Female surgeons also spent more median time per note than male surgeons (4.8 vs 2.5 minutes). Female surgeons wrote longer median inpatient progress notes (6,025.1 vs 4,307.7 characters/note) and longer outpatient notes (6,321.1 vs 4,445.3 characters/note). In adjusted models, male gender was associated with shorter character length for both documentations and progress notes.