JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The high prevalence of burnout among healthcare professionals has become a major concern in the medical landscape, which may lead to poor healthcare service and patient prognosis.

Objective:

This systematic review and meta-analysis attempted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence of clinician burnout related to electronic health records (EHR) thus providing ideas for improving health information systems and measuring and mitigating burnout.

Methods:

We searched peer-reviewed English articles published between January.1st, 2011 and December.31st, 2022 in PubMed, Embase, the Web of Science, Springer, and IEEE databases comprehensively. Two reviewers independently selected and assessed the included studies according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. We evaluated the bias and quality of the studies with the JBI checklist and the NOS scale. Meta-analysis was performed using EndNote X7 and R 4.1.3 software.

Results:

There were 32 cross-sectional studies and 5 case-control studies included in this meta-analysis and 66556 participants dominated by physicians, registered nurses, and a small number of physician assistants. The clinical professionals’ overall pooled burnout prevalence of cross-sectional studies included is 40.36% (95%CI: 37.54%-43.18%). The case-control studies indicated that medical professionals who spent more time on the EHR outside-work were more prone to experience burnout. (OR: 2.43, 95% CI: 2.31-2.57).

Conclusions:

The evidence explored the relationship between the use duration of the EHR and clinician burnout. Solutions include optimizing EHR design, automated dictation/note writing, and using scribes to reduce documentation burden. Clinical Trial: This systematic review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42021281173).