Graham Walker, MD, knows what it’s like to experience burnout. He’s familiar with feeling “mental fatigue” during his shifts.

“We spend so much time not just documenting [patient experiences], but constantly juggling clinical data, decision-making, and administrative tasks,” said Dr. Walker, an emergency physician with Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco. “That load accumulates across a shift and by hour 10, the decision[-making] and cognitive fatigue are real.”

But Dr. Walker recently got some help with the demands of his job, thanks to a system-wide change made by the hospital system that employs him—the rollout of an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) scribe program. “Offloading the charting to a scribe helps reduce that cognitive friction, so I’m not finishing each shift totally depleted,” Dr. Walker said.

Higher Burnout Odds

Even among their fellow doctors, emergency physicians are particularly susceptible to burnout. A recent study surveyed U.S. physicians and analyzed measures like emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (a lack of feeling towards patients).¹ After adjusting for personal and professional factors, the researchers found emergency physicians had three times the odds of burnout compared with those in other specialties. Emergency physicians were also half as likely to be satisfied with their work-life balance.

“Work hours are a strong predictor of burnout in these models,” said lead author Tait Shanafelt, MD, chief wellness officer at Stanford Medicine. However, emergency physicians remained at an elevated risk of burnout even after accounting for hours.

Moreover, since at least 2011—when Dr. Shanafelt first began looking at questions related to job stress and life satisfaction—burnout among the physician population overall hasn’t budged much; despite coming down from its COVID-19–era height, burnout levels remain concerningly high.

AI Assistance

AI scribes like those now in use at Kaiser seem to be a promising way to alleviate some of the stress, as substantiated by several pilot programs and at least one wide-reaching new report.

Whether administrative technologies could make a real difference in health care settings interested the leaders of the Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI)—an independent nonprofit initiative that evaluates technological health care innovations. To address the question, PHTI assembled a task force, which met first in September 2024, to consider both data and anecdotal feedback on AI scribe use. In a March report, the PHTI group pointed to broad evidence that the technology helps with stress.² Clinicians in a scribe pilot program conducted by MultiCare Health System—a not-for-profit health care organization that operates in and around Washington state—reported a 63 percent reduction in burnout and their peers at Boston-based Mass General Brigham reported a 40 percent reduction. Moreover, 79 percent of the Mass General Brigham physicians surveyed noted that by using ambient scribes, they were able to give more attention to their patients. More than two-thirds of those at MultiCare similarly said that the technology led to better interactions with their patients.

Emory University is also studying the benefits of the new computerized note-takers. A pilot program led by Tricia Smith, MBBS, MPH, an assistant professor of emergency medicine, looked at feedback from clinicians in five emergency departments.

“The [scribe] tool helps our clinicians feel a reduction in cognitive load, especially when working back-to-back shifts,” said Dr. Smith, who also practices clinically at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta, Ga. “Most of our users also feel more productive using it.” 

As for Dr. Smith personally, she’s a fan. “When I use our AI scribe, I can draft a note as close to the encounter time as possible,” she told ACEP Now. “This provides important detail and context for the physician who follows in the emergency department, outpatient clinic, inpatient floor, or intensive care unit. I’m less likely to transfer care without all the relevant information, from multiple sources, in the note.”

Beyond that, she estimated she now spends as much as 15 percent less time working on notes for any given patient. That kind of reduction could give doctors back a lot of time, especially considering the staggering amount of the day that emergency physicians spend on electronic health records. Emergency medicine residents, surveyed for a study published in 2021, spent more than 7.5 months during their three-year residency working on electronic health records.³

Use Caution

They may be popular and helpful, but AI scribes are not infallible.

“While human notes are error-prone, the types of errors made by AI tools may be different,” said Shira Fischer, PhD, senior physician policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank RAND. She pointed out that AI scribes should continue to be refined so that physicians are able to revise their notes in a way that doesn’t erase the gains they provide. “Getting a medication dose off by 100-fold because of ‘mishearing’ a decimal point could be dangerous,” she pointed out. “And it wouldn’t likely be a mistake that a human would make.”

In discussing how the scribes are used, Fischer also pointed out that patients must be informed about them—and how any data gathered will be used. 

Even so, by Dr. Walker’s account, the tools are already sophisticated. “I was skeptical at first—especially about accuracy and whether I’d be spending more time editing than it was worth,” he said. “But the tools are really quite good. I tend to also dictate a lot, and these tools do a much better job with hearing the word ‘not’ or the pertinent negatives, like ‘no fever.’” He has a tip for any new users: “The main adjustment is learning to speak intentionally so it captures key elements.”

The AI scribes represent such a step forward that physicians fear they may ultimately intensify burnout—speeding up doctor-patient interactions so much that health care systems will eventually demand that clinicians take on more patients in a typical day. Dr. Fischer acknowledged this “is a major concern.” She added, “Any system where a health care institution makes more money for a higher number of visits will aim to increase the number of visits.”

In the meantime, AI scribes seem to be already increasing autonomy for many emergency physicians. “It has helped a bit with how I structure my patient encounters and how I chart,” Dr. Walker said. “Ambient scribes give me back flexibility and control.” That, of course, is a good thing.

Maura Kelly, a health writer, is a special contributor to Annals of Emergency Medicine. She has done consulting work for PHTI.

References

1. Sanford J. U.S. physician burnout rates drop yet remain worryingly high, Stanford Medicine-led study finds. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/04/doctor-burnout-rates-what-they-mean.html. Published April 9, 2025. Accessed July 7, 2025.
2. Peterson Health Technology Institute. Leading health systems: AI-powered scribes alleviate clinician burnout; financial impact unclear. https://phti.org/announcement/ai-scribes-reduce-clinician-burnout/. Published March 25, 2025. Accessed July 7, 2025.
3. Olson E, Rushnell C, Khan A, et al. Emergency medicine residents spend over 7.5 months of their 3‐year residency on the electronic health record. AEM Educ Train. 2021;1;5(4):e10697.