I can still remember the first charts that I had to produce as a second year medical student. I can remember several patients falling asleep during the experience. I would practically be in a coma. Having done this for 20 years, I think that today I can tell a lot about a doctor's ability by looking at how he or she put their thoughts down on paper. Some doctors are great listeners but don't have much ability to steer the patient away from long dissertations that really don't add much to the development of an Assessment or Plan.
Some doctors can quickly write down the information in a legible, cohesive manner.
Others write terribly but almost always come up with the correct diagnosis. I'm always nervous about illegible, brief medical records that leave more to the imagination than tell a story. Templates have been around for a long time but they are becoming more popular now that HCFA has actually tried to define what is and is not an acceptable medical record. In emergency medicine, for example, templates can be found for over 100 complaints, events, circumstances, etc. The template chart, instead of offering the doctor a blank space or lines for his or her narrative, provides a series of prompts in the form of brief statements that can be checked or circled if those statements reflect positive or negative findings.