The woman was sitting on a gurney in the emergency room, and I was facing her, typing. I had just written about her abdominal pain when she posed a question I’d never been asked before: “May I take a look at what you’re writing?”
At the time, I was a fourth-year medical resident in Boston. In our ER, doctors routinely typed visit notes, placed orders and checked past records while we were in patients’ rooms. To maintain at least some eye contact, we faced our patients, with the computer between us.
But there was no reason why we couldn’t be on the same side of the computer screen. I sat down next to her and showed her what I was typing. She began pointing out changes. She’d said that her pain had started three weeks ago, not last week. Her chart mentioned alcohol abuse in the past; she admitted that she was under a lot of stress and had returned to heavy drinking a couple of months ago.
As we talked, her diagnosis — inflammation of the pancreas from alcohol use — became clear, and I wondered why I’d never shown patients their records before. In medical school, we learn that medical records exist so that doctors can communicate with other doctors. No one told us about the benefits they could bring when shared with patients.
Read Dr. Lena Wen’s full article on the NPR blog.
