How AI doctor’s notes are reducing burnout among providers

Physician burnout has been a long-standing issue, but it’s far from solved. Self-reported cases dipped slightly from 49% in 2024 to 47% in 2025, according to Medscape’s latest physician burnout and depression report.

Despite the small improvement, doctors are still burning out at higher rates than almost any other profession, fuelled by the time-intensive demands of EHR documentation. Many spend 5.8 hours per 8 hours of scheduled patient care on these administrative tasks rather than on direct patient care.

Your practice deserves better. Cue the arrival of AI-generated doctor’s notes: a smarter, faster approach to clinical documentation that’s helping providers cut down on administrative work, reclaim time, and stay focused on the patients in front of them.

This article breaks down how AI-powered medical scribes work, how ambient listening is reshaping documentation, and why Tebra’s AI Note Assist is emerging as a must-have tool in modern practice workflows.

Traditional medical transcription requires post-visit processing or a human scribe in the room (or virtually) documenting patient interactions. It’s time-consuming, costly, and can raise privacy concerns.

AI medical scribes replace these manual processes with ambient listening technology that captures natural provider-patient conversations and generates structured clinical notes in real time.

Here's how these AI-powered virtual scribes work:

With a medical AI scribe, practices can eliminate the distraction of manual note-taking and keep physicians focused entirely on their patients. 

Ambient AI scribes work quietly in the background, using voice recognition and natural language processing to understand medical conversations — even with medical acronyms, accents, or fast-paced speech.

They pull out billing-ready clinical details and format them automatically into editable notes. With less typing and more presence, doctors can build stronger rapport with patients and reduce mental load during busy days.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine featured these findings about the impact of ambient listening technology on physicians and patients:

The most effective AI scribes don’t just transcribe — they integrate. Tebra’s AI Note Assist, an AI scribe for providers, is embedded directly into the Tebra EHR. Using it means there are no additional platforms, no manual transfers, and no disruption to your workflow.

With Tebra's AI note assist, you get:

Practices that have adopted Tebra AI Note Assist are reclaiming hours of their day, improving patient engagement, and restoring provider satisfaction. Let’s explore a few real-world examples.

Angela Davis-Taylor, a family nurse practitioner at Daisy Family Health Care, shares how the tool slashed documentation time from nearly an hour to just minutes: "My notes used to take 30 to 60 minutes because they would be so detailed. With the Tebra AI Note Assist, each of my notes today took not even 5 minutes." This represents more than just time saved — it’s a reclamation of the provider’s workday.

This reduction in documentation time isn't an isolated case. John Ferren, IT systems administrator at Grace Women's Clinic, confirms similar results: "It could be 20 to 30 minutes for the provider to write the note. And with AI Note Assist, she was spending 3 minutes on each note."

When providers aren't tethered to keyboards, they can fully engage with patients. Tebra’s AI Note Assist allows doctors to focus on their patients, improving the overall patient experience.

"Patients enjoy the AI Note Assist because I can actually focus on them and they don't feel that I'm distracted writing my notes," Angela Davis-Taylor says.

Erica Cheshire from Beaumont WELLness for Women echoes this sentiment, appreciating how the technology enables more natural patient interactions: "What I like about the AI Note Assist is I can do small talk with my patient and the AI can pick up the parts of the conversation that matter the most, and filter out what's irrelevant. So I feel like I can be myself in the room, which is comforting."

Perhaps the most profound effect of reducing documentation burden is the restoration of work-life balance. 

Jennifer Sigler, a certified women’s health care nurse practitioner and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at Beaumont WELLness for Women, captures it perfectly: "I got to go home early yesterday because of AI Note Assist."

Even more striking is how the technology is preventing early retirements in a field already facing staffing shortages: "We have a provider who has wanted to retire for years [...] and the AI Note Assist turned it around for her. She feels that with this, she can continue working. It was huge for her," Ferren says.

Documentation doesn’t have to be a frustrating and time-intensive process. Tebra's AI Note Assist can help you transform your documentation workflow, so you can chart less, reclaim your time, reduce burnout, and provide more quality patient care. 

Learn more about how Tebra’s AI Note Assist can help your practice thrive by scheduling a demo today.