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Physician Facilitators Covenant HealthCare video Transcription
Ray Scott: Hi I’m Ray Scott a volunteer at the SkyWalk Café and surgical waiting
at Cooper and Harrison. Covenant and SVSU have partnered together to create a one of
its kind program for patients, physicians and pre-med students.
Narrator: Covenant Health Care and Saginaw Valley State University have started a unique
alliance placing SVSU students in the emergency care center as real time medical transcriptionists.
Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator, “A lot of places report that as they got
to a electronic medical record, they see a decrease in productivity. Now we have seen
that. We kept dictating, and I think that helped us quite a bit. But we knew over time
we were gonna have to do something different. Transcription is very expensive and it is
not immediately available.” Narrator: Staff had tossed around the idea
of physician facilitators, also known as scribes in the ECC. Those ideas came to life last
summer. Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator:
“A good friend of mine was over for a barbecue. We were sitting there talking and he’s a
professor over at SVSU. He said ‘hey you know I’ve been looking at other class ideas.
And I started talking about the scribe program. He thought this would be awesome. I could
teach people and then you guys come over and use them as scribes. And so that is where
this started. We have kind of had this collaboration ever since.
Narrator: Deibel’s friend is SVSU Kinesiology Professor John Lowry.
SVSU Kinesiology Professor John Lowry: “What we’re doing and the way we’re doing it
is different from the way other hospitals go about it. There are a lot of other hospitals
that are using scribes in the emergency room department. Many of them hire private companies
to come in and transcribe for a period of time and then maybe provide some ongoing consultations
and services to support that. Ours is unique because we’re the only university that I
know of that’s not affiliated with a medical school that is offering the class. Also, we
plan to do a lot of research related to the scribe program.
Narrator: The physician facilitators accompany a physician during a shift and capture data
into an electronic medical record. While they have no direct patient contact, they are a
great asset to patients, physicians and the hospitals.
Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator: “As I’m going through interviewing the
patient, they have learned to pick out the important things. And they put it into a format
like a doctor speaks. There’s a lot of training that goes into these scribes: learning the
terminology, learning how a doctor speaks. There’s a lot of on the job training, even
after they’re hired. But once they are done, their charts are amazing. Some of them are
better than the resident’s charts are sometimes.” Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator:
“It used to be that I would conduct an eight hour shift and then start dictating. Ideally,
you do as you go, but then there are patients to be seen that are urgent. And so you gotta
go see the patient. So by the end of your shift you’re left with 15, 20, 25 charts
to do from memory. But now, it’s mostlye written by the scribes.
Narrator: One of the advantages for physicians, according to Deibel, is there is more patient
time and less computer time. In turn, the patient acceptance rate of scribes is 97%.
Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator: “I’m not trying to take notes frantically.
I’m not trying to memorize everything you’re saying. I’m just kind of listening. Ojk,
that, good. Ok, that , good, good. And my scribes are taking care of all of the documentation
aspect of it.” Narrator: Christina Berkshire was one of the
first students who went through the medical scribes training course. She now runs the
program for the scribes . Lead Physician Facilitator and SVSU student
Christina Bershire: “It gives us a chance to kind of really see what medicine is like.
When you volunteer and you’re cleaning or giving pillows or changing sheets and this
gives us a chance to really see what the doctors are doing. They explain things, maybe not
to us, but we get to hear it or we get to see the procedures that you wouldn’t get
to see in your volunteering. It is the first class that actually pertains to what we want
to do.” Narrator: Kinesiology 390 utilizes team based
learning where students take quizzes and tests individually and as teams.
SVSU Kinesiology Professor John Lowry: “They are held accountable to each other for participating,
for collaborating, and everyone in the group gets the same score. It encourages every member
to be an active part of it. They have a lot of discussion outside of class. They really
learn a lot from each other which makes my job easier so that I am not the one teaching
it to them for the first time. Narrator: Other important tools used in the
class are emergency department simulation videos. These videos are created in the Sim
lab at Synergy Medical. SVSU Kinesiology Professor John Lowry: “We
are able to show these videos in class to the students and they practices scribing them
in real time, just like they would in a real case. We would pause them and review them
for accuracy and for completeness. We give students a lot of immediate feedback on how
they are doing. Narrator: Currently 14 scribes work in Convent’s
PCC. And more are going through the class now and will be eligible for employment in
the April.With 80,000 visits to the ECC in 2011, scribes can vastly improve patient flow
through the department . SVSU Kinesiology Professor John Lowry: “It’s
our job to make sure that the scribes are ready to hit the ground running once they
are hired. The students who will graduate from the program, from the class, this year
will be far better than the first class simply because we’ve been able to learn from what
we’ve done before and we’ve been able to enhance the class. We have a lot of things
we are doing now that have come from what we’ve learned about the past.”
Lead Physician Facilitator and SVSU student Christina Bershire: “I would retake it again
just to see how much has evolved and what else you can learn. What they are going through
now is a little bit different than what I went through. The experience now that it gives
me on my job is the best thing that has happened in my undergrad.”
Matthew Deibel, MD, Clinical Operation Coordinator: “Everybody I’ve talked to agrees that
if they had a chance to do this when they were pre-med, they would have jumped at this.
These scribes, they are shoulder to shoulder with a doc. They are walking should to shoulder,
right into a room, they are right there seeing a patient in whatever condition they’re
in, and whatever needs to be done. And they’re getting to see the real side of medicine.