Hospital's 'scribes' help them focus more on patients, less on paperwork

From SignOnSanDiego:

Doctors struggling to keep pace with the growing volume of patients who pass through Tri-City Medical Center's emergency room are getting help from an unlikely source: college students.

The Oceanside hospital has hired undergraduate pre-med students and recent graduates as “scribes” to document physician notes and orders in the emergency room – work that doctors usually do themselves.

That change gives doctors at one of the busiest emergency rooms in San Diego County more time to spend with their patients and provides the students with real-world medical experience they normally wouldn't get until later in medical school