Man vs machine in emergency medicine – a study on the effects of manual and automatic vital sign documentation on data quality and perceived workload, using observational paired sample data and questionnaires

BACKGROUND: Emergency medicine is characterized by a high patient flow where timely decisions are essential. Clinical decision support systems have the potential to assist in such decisions but will be dependent on the data quality in electronic health records which often is inadequate. This study explores the effect of automated documentation of vital signs on data quality and workload. METHODS: An observational study of 200 vital sign measurements was performed to evaluate the effects of manual vs automatic documentation on data quality. Data collection using questionnaires was performed to compare the workload on wards using manual or automatic documentation. RESULTS: In the automated documentation time to documentation was reduced by 6.1 min (0.6 min vs 7.7 min, p < 0.05) and completeness increased (98% vs 95%, p < 0.05). Regarding workflow temporal demands were lower in the automatic documentation workflow compared to the manual group (50 vs 23, p < 0.05). The same was true for frustration level (64 vs 33, p < 0.05). The experienced reduction in temporal demands was in line with the anticipated, whereas the experienced reduction in frustration was lower than the anticipated (27 vs 54, p < 0.05). DISCUSSION: The study shows that automatic documentation will improve the currency and the completeness of vital sign data in the Electronic Health Record while reducing workload regarding temporal demands and experienced frustration. The study also shows that these findings are in line with staff anticipations but indicates that the anticipations on the reduction of frustration may be exaggerated among the staff. The open-ended answers indicate that frustration focus will change from double documentation of vital signs to technical aspects of the automatic documentation system. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12873-018-0205-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.