Table 5.

Prominent EHR workarounds associated with Tasks and their scope and potential impact (↑ denotes an increase, ↓ denotes a decrease, • denotes a negligible influence, and ? denotes undecided. P stands for patient, C for health care professional [clinician or clerk], and O for the overall organization).

Rationale	Workaround	Scope	Safety	Effectiveness	Efficiency
Task interference	Writing patient data down on paper during examinations as a memory aid and reentering these data into the EHR after patients left the examination room, as some clinicians indicated that they cannot simultaneously examine patients and enter patient data	C	•	•	↓
	Writing patient data down on paper during telephone consultations as a memory aid and reentering these data into the EHR after the telephone conversation, as some clinicians indicated that they cannot simultaneously call and enter patient data	C	•	•	↓
	Entering all relevant patient data into a single inappropriate data field and reentering these data into the appropriate data fields after patients left the room	C	↓	•	↓
Commitment to patient interaction	Writing down keywords on paper during patient visits and entering these data into the EHR after patients left the room to spend more time interacting with patients	PC	•	↑	↓
	Entering patient data or draft orders into the EHR before seeing patients to spend more time interacting with patients	PC	•	↑	↓