Glossary
Pajama time
Pajama time is the record-keeping that clinicians finish after their clinic day ends, often at home in the evening. A 2017 study of primary care clinicians measured 86 minutes of EHR work per weekday after clinic hours.
Updated October 17, 20263 cited facts, each traced to its source
Also called after-hours documentation.
Pajama time is the work clinicians do in the electronic health record after their scheduled clinic day ends, often at home in the evening. The name is informal, but the work is measured. It is the notes, messages and orders that spill past the last appointment.
After-hours charting is measured in minutes
In a 2017 study of primary care clinicians at one academic health system, clinicians spent 269 minutes, or 4.5 hours, in the EHR during clinic hours and 86 minutes, or 1.4 hours, after clinic hours on each weekday 1. The same study put the whole EHR day at 5.9 hours of an 11.4-hour workday 2. The after-hours share is the part that most often reaches home.
Measuring your own after-hours time is the first step before you decide what to change.
The evidence on notes comes from AI scribes
Some studies have tested whether a scribe reduces note time. In a 2025 Australian study of allied health clinicians using an AI scribe, time spent on notes, letters and out-of-hours notes fell significantly at six weeks and three months compared with baseline 3. That study covered allied health practices, not physicians, so its results are not a direct estimate for doctors.
A concrete example
A family physician sees patients until 5 pm. At 9 pm she opens the chart at her kitchen table, finishes three visit notes, and signs two prescriptions. The notes were dictated during the day, but the drafts still needed review and signing, so that is the work she does at night. This is an example, not a survey result, but it matches the pattern the measurements describe.
Why it matters for dictation and typing
Dictation moves the typing out of the evening, but only if the note is also reviewed and signed before the clinician leaves. A draft that waits for the evening keeps the work at home even when it was spoken in the morning. The practical goal is to finish each note at the visit or the same afternoon.
If you type your notes, the same rule applies. The time saved by a faster input method is lost if the review still happens after hours.
Related terms
- Electronic health record is the system where the after-hours work is done.
- Medical scribe is a human or AI role that can take notes off the clinician's hands during the visit.
- SOAP note is the note structure most of this work fills.
Guides that cover it
Evidence
Every number on this page, with where it comes from. Open a fact to see the exact words in its source.
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Related terms
- Dictation for Work: Doctors, Lawyers, Writers, StudentsThe topic this term belongs to
- Back-end speech recognitionBack-end speech recognition is a workflow in which the dictated audio is recognized and then edited by someone else, usually a transcriptionist, before it is signed. Its main trade-off is the cost and time of the second pass against the writer's own editing effort.
- CopytakerA copytaker was a typist in a newspaper office who took down stories that reporters dictated over the telephone. The Collins English Dictionary defines the role this way, and it predates the computer-based filing that replaced it.
- Dictation templateA dictation template is a block of text saved under a short spoken phrase, so one phrase inserts the whole block. Dragon calls these auto-texts, and Microsoft's Dragon Medical One guide documents the command that creates one from selected text.
- Electronic health record (EHR)An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital record of a patient's health information, built up over time from visits across care settings. The federal eCQI glossary also calls it an electronic medical record (EMR), and it is where dictated and typed notes end up.
- Front-end speech recognitionFront-end speech recognition is a workflow in which the person who dictates also reviews, corrects and signs the text, instead of passing the audio to someone else. The term is most common in radiology, where it is set against back-end transcription.
- Medical scribeA medical scribe is a person, or more recently an AI tool, that records what happens in a clinical visit and writes it into the chart so the clinician can focus on the patient. The clinician remains responsible for the note and must check and sign it.
- Registered Healthcare Documentation Specialist (RHDS)The Registered Healthcare Documentation Specialist (RHDS) is a voluntary credential from AHDI for people who create healthcare documentation. It is awarded after an exam of 120 questions, and it is a prerequisite for the CHDS.
- ScopistA scopist edits the transcripts of official proceedings that court reporters create. Scopists are typically paid by the page, starting from $1.00 to $1.50 per page, and the role is also called transcript editor.
- SOAP noteA SOAP note is a structured clinical note with four parts: Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan. The format was developed by Larry Weed, and a StatPearls reference article describes it as a widely used documentation method for clinicians.
- Transcription line rateA transcription line is a unit of 65 characters, and the line count is the number of such units in a document. The transcription line rate is the price paid for each line, so the unit controls how transcribed work is measured.