Pros
- You can use scribe hours for PA/NP/Med School, but make sure you are doing this job mainly for this reason because you will start to dislike the job - They love hiring current college students or those already with a college degree even though they said the requirement was a "high school diploma or bachelor's degree preferred". Where I worked, we were mostly college graduates while one was currently finishing up nursing school. - Okay if you want to get healthcare experience and make physician connections, but working at the emergency department is usually a fast-paced environment. So beware especially near or during holidays and during flu season. - You get to choose your job availability monthly, so make sure you are final with your decisions. I usually gave them many days of availability in a month and it backfired - they kept giving me shifts that ended at 1:30 AM and sometimes the night shift (since only few signed up for it) which ended at 6 AM. Do not sign up for the night shift because for a good 3 hours you will be the only scribe with the only doctor there until the morning scribe and doctor arrives. Unless you are confident in keeping up with the doctor since there are patients after another that are brought in by EMS, and a few walk-ins.
Cons
- Base hourly pay given to me was $11/hour since I had no prior scribe experience. I only took it because I lived only a few minutes away from said location and was desperate to get healthcare experience or any work experience at all. -On-board training took me 2-3 months just to go to 2 classroom training and 1 orientation day. They only offered 1 or 2 training dates per month because of their schedule as they would say. Honestly, they could have better planned/managed this. They provide you medical terminology documents and videos to study from before being tested during one of the classroom training. Make sure to study well and ahead of time. - Floor training consisted of 5 days where an experienced scribe teaches you how to navigate EPIC as well as how to improve your HPI. Providers/doctors will never like your HPI because each one of them have different standards and will confuse you on what is "right". - Besides providers telling you that your HPI is doo doo (lol), they will question why you wrote certain things even though that is what you really believed you heard from the patient in the room. So yes, communication is key in asking the doctor to verify what you heard. But honestly, I could tell in their faces sometimes that they are annoyed at me for asking to clarify, but what's better? Being thought as annoying and being passively made fun of, or leaving mistakes in a patients chart? You be the judge, but either way it feels like doo doo. Oh yeah, some doctors sign off charts for completion without going through it in-depth and then lead scribes will grill you for making many mistakes in charting even though it was the doctor's job to review it and duh supervise your work. - I hated the thought of having to go work the next day especially hating the thought of who/which doctor I will be working with the next day. I noticed P.A.s were a lot nicer than M.D.s/O.D.s. You don't get to choose who to work with. - On my 30-day evaluation with lead scribes, I was provided a list of ONLY negative feedback said from doctors. Not a single positive feedback except for, you were doing so well for the first few months but you have now declined and got a lot of negative feedback. What? I was not even notified for many of them. I guess those doctors would rather complain about me on a piece of paper than to my face. Everyone makes mistake, which is why as doctors you are supposed to correct us scribes and not just write a complaint on my evaluations. Students fail because you fail to train/educate/teach them well! - There will rarely be any scribe interactions as you will always be with your provider. -Beware of cranky nurses because many of them are forced or asked to work overtime. - I have a lot more to say, but this is too long now lol. Yes, I very much hated this job, but I am nice enough to give it a 2 star rating because of the experience, hours and letter of recommendations you can possibly get from providers (if they like you).
