#2-49E. Reclaiming the Bedside: Practical Strategies for Clinical Encounter Mastery (NEJM, 2025)

In today's highly digitized clinical landscape, how can we combat the pervasive decline in fundamental bedside skills that contributes significantly to diagnostic error and physician burnout? Medical trainees today spend as little as 13% of their time in direct contact with patients, leading to the erosion of essential clinical skills and contributing to poor outcomes and health care disparities. This comprehensive review offers six practical, evidence-based strategies for clinical educators to reinvigorate the teaching and practice of bedside clinical skills within the modern healthcare setting, countering the overreliance on technology and the electronic health record. The central finding is that systematic bedside education is crucial not only for aiding diagnosis but also for improving diagnostic reasoning, strengthening the doctor–patient relationship, enhancing professional fulfillment, and directly addressing health care disparities. However, one key consideration is that formal assessment tools used to reinforce these skills, such as the Assessment of Physical Examination and Communication Skills (APECS), are often resource-intensive and necessarily conducted outside the routine delivery of patient care. This paper provides actionable methods for physicians to improve diagnostic accuracy and reclaim professional fulfillment, ensuring the clinical encounter remains a meaningful and effective cornerstone of daily practice.

Citation: Garibaldi BT, Russell SW. Strategies to Reinvigorate the Bedside Clinical Encounter. New England Journal of Medicine. 2025. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra2500226

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