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Shadowing a Physician: Michael Kellman

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Shadowing a Physician: Michael Kellman

Shadowing a Physician: Michael Kellman September 24, 2018

In a previous post, we shared an Elation team member’s first-person perspective on shadowing a physician—a core component of our hiring process—and how the experience influenced their approach to developing a clinical first EHR for physicians and making physicians’ lives easier. This week, another team member will share their story and talk about how their experience shaped their empathy for independent physicians.

Michael Kellman is a User Success Specialist who has previous experience working as an Implementation Specialist for another EHR company. His physician shadow took place in the Spring of 2018.

Going into my physician shadowing experience, I thought I knew what was coming. After spending time working at a previous EHR company, where I primarily trained healthcare professionals during the live implementation period, I was more familiar with a healthcare paradigm that felt chaotic, stressful, and fast-paced for patients and physicians alike. But my previous illusions were flipped the moment I stepped foot into Dr. Fong’s office.

Seeing the patient-physician relationship at the center of it all gave me a new outlook of what a physician practice could embody.

As I was shadowing Dr. Fong, I observed what I had always envisioned – a patient visit without distractions and with full attention toward the patient’s needs. Throughout the day, I was able to examine Dr. Fong using Elation’s platform effortlessly and without potentially costly documentation errors.

I noticed how empowered Dr. Fong felt to be personable while spending time with his patients. There was plenty of conversation and laughs shared all while documenting through Elation’s software.

Dr. Fong and I even had time to snap a quick picture in between seeing patients!

 

Being on the user success side of things, I had an idea of how user-friendly Elation’s EHR seemed to be, but actually watching Dr. Fong charting so quickly and easily while still having the opportunity to have the type of meaningful conversations patient’s oftentimes miss out on due to a cumbersome EHR experience was exciting and intriguing.

In the past, I would witness all too many instances where a physician felt like their EHR dictated their patient encounters because of poorly-designed features or extra, unnecessary actions and clicks just to complete simple tasks.

At the end of the day, with the patient being the primary focus, the invaluable connections that are forged between patients and physicians at practices like Dr. Fong’s gave me a new blueprint for how an EHR could enhance, not detract from, a patient encounter.