In the Dark — The Case for Electronic Health Records

Abstract

I sighed as I flipped again through the paperwork sent with my first admission of the night. All I found was a partially legible discharge summary. The patient, a young man who was ventilator dependent and in a vegetative state since receiving a gunshot injury 6 months previously, had been transferred from a nursing home after a workup revealed a new deep venous thrombosis in his leg.From the limited notes provided by the nursing home, I ascertained that the gunshot had initially caused a subarachnoid hemorrhage. It was my job, as a night-float admitting resident, to determine whether it . . .