Are We Turning Our Backs on Our Patients? Training Psychiatrists in the Era of the Electronic Health Record.

Over the past three decades, psychiatry’s focus has shifted away from the couch and toward the computer. Gone are the days when psychiatrists took notes in longhand—or listened without taking any notes at all. Whatever their theoretical orientation, today’s psychiatrists are faced with the reality of the electronic health record, a key provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, which mandated that all health care providers billing Medicare adopt and demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records by 2014. Those who work in hospital settings—including psychiatric residents and their onsite supervisors—must find a way to effectively incorporate electronic health records into the practice of psychiatry. Electronic charting may interfere with the quality of the doctor-patient relationship and, ironically, diminish the accuracy and meaningfulness of medical records.