Because of AI, physicians using ambient scribes reported modestly less burnout, exhaustion, and task load in a 238-physician randomized trial.
Modest burnout reduction (RCT)AchievedNov 4, 2024 – Jan 3, 2025Published
NEJM AI (Dec 2025) randomized 238 outpatient physicians across 14 specialties to Microsoft DAX, Nabla, or usual care for two months; either scribe improved burnout, exhaustion, and task load, and Nabla reduced time-in-note.
Effects were modest, only one vendor saved documentation time, occasional note inaccuracies required vigilance, and the trial ran Nov 2024–Jan 2025.
- Compared with
- Scribe access vs usual care, covariate-constrained randomization
- Effect
- Modest improvements on burnout, exhaustion, task load (see paper for effect sizes)
- Reach
- 238 physicians, one academic health system
- Domain
- Work · Generative
- Conflicts
- verify: vendor funding or in-kind support.
- What would move the grade
- Patient-outcome or quality measures, not just clinician self-report.
Sources
- primaryNEJM AI: Ambient AI Scribes in Clinical Practice — A Randomized Trial (PMC) (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- primaryJAMIA (May 2026): randomized crossover of two ambient scribes, 160 clinicians (Duke) (scholars.duke.edu)
Editor's notes
Window is pre for the NEJM AI trial; verify dates of the Duke crossover trial — it may be in-window.
Related
History
- Added.
Cite this entry
Permalink https://becauseofai.org/entry/ambient-scribes-nejm-ai
“Because of AI, physicians using ambient scribes reported modestly less burnout, exhaustion, and task load in a 238-physician randomized trial.” Because of AI, updated Oct 22, 2026. https://becauseofai.org/entry/ambient-scribes-nejm-ai