FEATURE
From Scribing Notes to Saving Lives: The transition from scribing in the Emergency Department to medical school and beyond By Patrick Anderson, OMS-III Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University
Receiving your acceptance letter to medical school is one of the most exciting and joyous moments in an aspiring physician’s life, but the path taken to receive the letter can be daunting to say the least. One of the biggest contributors to this evergrowing ball of stress and anxiety is finding extracurricular involvement and medical experience that you believe will make you a standout applicant. Is there one experience that is better than the rest? I’m sure this could be answered differently by every healthcare worker you encounter, but I personally know that scribing in the emergency department (ED) not only helped guide me toward a career in emergency medicine, but also gave me the type of exposure and experience needed to be a great medical student. So what exactly is a scribe and what do they do? As a scribe, you are fortunate enough to accompany the resident, attending or other healthcare provider in every patient encounter as they obtain a history, perform a physical exam and discuss their assessment and plan with the patient. Scribes get to see everything from the sniffles all the way up to Level 1 trauma alerts. They are responsible for writing all the health 48
information collected in the electronic medical record (EMR) in an organized, fluent and detailed manner. This alone is a wonderful learning opportunity, but it gets better. After the initial patient encounter, scribes watch the resident or healthcare provider present the patient to the attending as they discuss the differential diagnosis and workup. If there are residents present, this is likely a teaching hospital, in which there will be educational points made within the discussion. Altogether, scribes get to see a patient encounter from start to finish, all while picking up key skills that they will use throughout medical school, residency and their careers in medicine. Over my two years of scribing in the ED at UF Health Gainesville, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge that I did not fully appreciate until medical school. During my first two years of medical school, I was able to answer countless exam questions solely using my prior scribe experience. Learning how to perform a patient exam and write a SOAP note came much easier to me because I had done it so many times before. Not to mention, I also had multiple questions on the USMLE Step 1 exam that I would not have known if EMpulse Spring 2021
not for scribing. Throughout my first year of rotations as a medical student, I noticed that presenting a patient, proposing differential diagnoses, and formulating an assessment and plan came more naturally. The knowledge and skills I had gained from watching thousands of patient encounters and resident presentations as a scribe gave me the confidence to see more patients and get more involved during clinical rotations. Even three years later, I still remembered what scribing had taught me; it’s the gift that keeps on giving. I knew I couldn’t be the only prior scribe to notice how the job has impacted my medical school career, and I wasn’t wrong. One of my personal mentors, current 4th-year medical student and future EM resident physician at UF Health Jacksonville, Alexa Peterson, had this to say about her scribing experience: “Looking back, if I had to pick, being a scribe prior to medical school was the single most beneficial thing I did to prepare myself for this path. It was what propelled me into the field of emergency medicine. First, it taught me time management and prioritization, both of which we know are critical for surviving medical school. I was in class and on campus
