A Clinician’s Report of the Unintended Consequences of Electronic Health Records

Electronic health records (EHRs) are complex. Clinicians must interact with patient data, order entry, decision support, reporting services, messaging programs, administrative data, and many other services. These services require user input and decision making, known as user interactions, between clinician and the EHR. EHRs have features designed to facilitate users’ interactions, such as alerts, reminders, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse click menus. These features can lead to unintended consequences, which combine with user interactions, thus making the EHR complicated and difficult to use. Awareness of user interactions and the unintended consequences will improve EHR design and lead to greater clinician acceptance of EHRs