🩺 What Do Medical Scribes Do? A Clinician’s Perspective

By: Empathia Editorial Team
May 13, 2025

If you’ve ever left a full clinic day with six unfinished notes, three incomplete referrals, and no idea what time it is - congrats, you’ve met the documentation burden of modern medicine.

For many physicians, medical scribes or transcriptionists have been the answer. But what they do can look wildly different depending on the specialty, setting, and these days, the type of scribe you're using.

So let’s walk through it, from a clinician’s perspective.

📋 What Is the Core Job of a Medical Scribe?

At its most basic, a medical scribe captures and formats the clinical information you’d otherwise have to write yourself.

That includes:

• Patient history and presenting concerns

• Physical exam findings

• Assessment and plan

• Procedures performed

• Referrals or follow-up instructions

• Billing and coding details (especially under MSP or insurance-based models)

But how that gets done depends on the how and who.

🧍🏽 Human Scribes: Real-Time Help, Real Logistics

In high-volume specialties like emergency medicine or orthopedics, human scribes still have a strong foothold.

They often:

• Work alongside you, entering notes into the EMR in real time

• Pre-load standard templates or order sets

• Prep referrals while you wrap up the patient discussion

• Support live documentation during fast-moving cases

Downside? Training, availability, and cost—especially in solo or community practice settings. Many rural or under-resourced clinics simply can’t justify the added headcount.

🌐 Virtual Scribes: Convenience with a Lag

Virtual scribes (offsite humans who listen and document) offer:

• Real-time or batched notes

• Lower staffing cost than in-person scribes

• Flexibility in location and scheduling

But they also require:

• Coordination with time zones

• High-quality audio inputs

• Manual review for quality control

• Data privacy gaps

And when notes aren’t ready in time? You’re still stuck editing or finishing later.

🤖 AI Medical Scribes: Real-Time, Specialty-Aware, Self-Taught

This is where tools like Empathia have stepped in, not as replacements for judgment, but as assistants that learn from your practice.

“AI scribes don’t need a chair, a login, or a schedule. They just need your voice.”

Here’s how clinicians across specialties use AI scribes differently:

🔍 What Scribes Actually Solve (That’s Hard to Quantify)

Let’s shift from “they write notes” to what really matters:

🕒 Time Recovery

Notes get finished faster and in many cases, during the visit.

🧠 Cognitive Load Reduction

You don’t have to remember phrasing, patient phrasing, or what they said right before the nurse came in.

📈 Billing Accuracy

Scribes (human or AI) catch when you forget to include that second diagnosis or billable code.

🧾 Workflow Fluidity

The visit flows. You stay engaged. You’re not “catching up” all day.

✍️ Better Chart Quality

When you're not rushing or reconstructing an encounter from memory, the documentation gets clearer, more consistent, and legally stronger.

🧠 From One Clinician to Another…

Medical scribes aren’t just clerical helpers. They're workflow stabilizers.

“I charted for years without one. I didn’t think I needed help. Then I tried an AI scribe for a week and realized I had no idea how much effort I was wasting.”

Whether you use a person, a platform, or a blend, the value of a scribe is in supporting how you think, not just what you type.

🧭 Not Sure What Scribe Setup Is Right for You?

Here’s a quick guide:

🎯 Final Word

What do scribes do?

They give you back your time, your focus, and your clinical voice.

And in 2025, you don’t need a full team to benefit from one.

You just need a tool that knows what your day actually looks like.

Want to see how it can work for your workflow?

👉 Start Your Free Trial

💬 Book a 15-min onboarding session