NHS paediatric consultants’ remote access to electronic health record: love it, loath it but won’t get rid of it

Over the last decade, there have been significant advances in information technology (IT) within the medical environment to improve safety and quality in clinical care. One such intervention is remote access to electronic health records (RA-EHR), defined as accessing healthcare records away from the hospital setting. More National Health Service (NHS) trusts enable RA-EHR to clinicians including access to live patient observations, electronic prescriptions, radiology and pathology databases, clinic letters and emails. Studies have shown senior clinicians accessing clinical information remotely had contacted junior teams to make changes in clinical management, postulating that it may serve to improve patient safety.1 2 However, there is potential for clinicians to invest more of their personal time to clinical commitments, leading to burnout and stress.3 4 To …