Indiscriminate copy–pasting of clinical notes between records is causing “note bloat” and infecting records with errors, according to two papers in Internal Medicine Journal. 

A study at Lyell McEwin Hospital in SA found that copy–pasting was responsible for errors in 8.3% of the 97 ward-round records studied.

Errors were exclusively in the “issues list” of electronic medical records, including notes that patients were on IV antibiotics that had already ceased or that patients were awaiting test results that had already been returned. 

In one case, the notes said a patient was awaiting a tunnelled central venous catheter insertion despite having undergone the procedure already.