Open Notes

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Anchor lead: What should you do if you find something amiss in your medical record? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Open Notes is an effort to ensure that patients can see and review their complete medical chart, with some studies finding that when physicians use language patients find troubling, it can compromise trust. Tatiana Prowell, a breast cancer expert at Johns Hopkins and advocate for intentional language in medical communications, says if you see something, say something.

Prowell: If you feel there’s misinformation in your medical record, that you have to bring up. Sometimes something incorrect gets into the medical record, in the interest of time people copy and paste things or forward a last note and then edit that, so errors can get propagated in the medical record. It’s one of the bigger dangers I think of electronic medical records but if there’s something like learning about a poor prognosis through a note that really is an issue of trust. I think that that’s something that also needs to be brought to the physician’s attention and it probably needs to be done in person.  :33

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.