Why do doctors/nurses hate charting?

Question

Charting seems to be an annoying task whenever I volunteer at a hospital

Answer 1

I hate charting because it's so time consuming! You have to make sure everything gets put in, or it may come back & bite you in the behind!  The thing I hate most, is when we transport a patient, and it takes more time to do the paperwork than it does to transport the patient (I'm spending more time on the paperwork than I actually spent with the patient!).  But again, it's all legalities.

Answer 2

In my specialty, it's usual to spend three minutes with a patient and twenty with the chart. That isn't why I went into medicine. Despite what sometimes seems their best efforts to change my mind, the patients tend to be the likable part.

Answer 3

Because it's a tedious task - every word, every single word, is their account of a patient's care.  If they are not exactly on point, it can come back and bite them.

Now, if you're talking traditional paper charting, your hospital should really look into an Electronic Health Record.  More convenient, more secure, and in the next 3 or 4 years, the Federal government will require all hospitals to be electronic.  Just a sidebar...

Answer 4

Because it leaves them less time for bonking!

Answer 5

I am a nurse...the reason I hate chart is because, I didn't sign up to type all day. I want to take care of my patients. It is also extremely time consuming. You feel like you have to rush patient care to be able to make time to chart. This is not what the most important! But, like the other guy said, if we don't take the time to do it correctly and precisely, we are the ones who get called on it. There is a phrase that nurses  use.....Document, document, document, because if it's not in the chart, you didn't do it.  

Answer 6

I agree with what's already been said here. It's tedious work that takes away time for you to take a very needed nap at night when you're on-call. Many hospitals even in Mexico are starting to become electronic (it's pretty normal to see everything electronic in private hospitals); but you'll still see people filling starts with typewriters or by hand which takes longer.

However, if you s***w up with the chart and don't put things correctly and with clear writing, if something goes wrong with the patient (even if it isn't your fault), the patient can still sue you by showing that you made a poorly written chart out of laziness.

I even know a hospital where you not only have to type in each box every symptom the patient DOESN'T have (it just makes more sense to type in the symptoms the patient has, but meh), but if you make a mistake at the end of the page (the charts in that hospital are done with a typewriter), you have to start all over again with a new piece of paper which is really annoying for the residents. They waste 20 minutes writing one of those charts, but fortunately they only have to do one with patients that need to be hospitalized.

If the charts of a specific hospital are electronic and hospital policy only requires you to mention the signs & symptoms the patient really has instead of listing a gazillion symptoms the person doesn't have, I don't find it to be that annoying. Better doing that than just sitting at night staring at the ceiling in boredom because there's no patients and you can't take a nap.

Answer 7

Charting is an annoying task. You have to remember every detail about every client. I don't know about the hospital. But in the nursing home I work at, I have to document every single bowel movement and it's size/shape, the amount of times the resident urinates/how much urine was emptied from their catheters, their mood, how much they ate/drank, what they ate/drank, how much they helped you with transfers, and so on. You must really pay attention to fine detail, and have a good memory. Which isn't an issue after becoming familar with the residents. But I assume, it'd be more complicated with new faces every day. Not to mention, it's repeditive.