THURSDAY, April 2, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly one-third of U.S. family medicine residents report spending three hours or more per day working after hours on ambulatory electronic health records (EHRs), according to a study published in the March issue of Academic Medicine.
Wendy B. Barr, M.D., from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues conducted a survey of 9,653 U.S. family medicine residents to examine the association between resident pajama time (three hours or more per night on ambulatory EHRs) and burnout, professional satisfaction, and medical knowledge.
The researchers found that 32.3 percent reported high pajama time, which was more common in older, female, underrepresented-in-medicine, and international medical graduate residents. When controlling for characteristics, high pajama time was associated with lower examination scores (odds ratio [OR], 1.28), decreased odds of professional satisfaction (OR, 0.61), training program satisfaction (OR, 0.62), and higher odds of burnout (OR, 1.61).
"The more you're in clinic, the more pajama time you seem to have," Barr said in a statement. "That tells us there's a systems aspect to this."