What typing costs you
A patient watching you type gives shorter answers, volunteers less, and stops mid-sentence when you stop typing. The consultation reorganises itself around the note rather than the person, and the thing you most needed to hear is the thing they decided not to mention.
The alternative most clinicians actually use is writing the note afterwards, which trades consultation quality for an hour at the end of the day and a note written from memory.
The recording approach, honestly
Recording the consultation and drafting the note from the transcript solves the attention problem and creates two new obligations: telling the patient, and reviewing what comes back.
Neither is optional. A patient must know before it starts, in plain words, and be able to decline without it being awkward. And a drafted note is a draft — the clinician remains the author of what goes into the record.
What to say to the patient
“I record consultations so I can listen to you properly instead of typing. It stays in your record and nobody else sees it. Is that alright?” Then pause.
In practice most patients prefer it, and say so — they have all had the consultation where the doctor faced a screen. The ones who decline usually have a specific reason worth knowing.
The multilingual problem nobody mentions
A Gulf clinic runs consultations in Arabic, English, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog, frequently within one appointment when a family member is interpreting. Most transcription tools ask you to pick a language before you start, which is a question the room cannot answer.
If a tool cannot follow a switch mid-sentence, it will transcribe the clinician and lose the patient — which is precisely backwards.
What still has to be done by hand
Examination findings, because they were not spoken. Anything you concluded but did not say aloud. And the coding, which is a clinical judgement rather than a transcription task.
A tool that claims to produce a filed note with no review is claiming something it cannot deliver, and in a clinical setting that claim is the problem rather than the feature.
Before you record anything in a clinical setting
Healthcare has obligations on top of ordinary consent rules, and they vary by country, by emirate and by whether you are in public or private practice. Check what applies to your practice specifically before you start, not after.
Nothing here is legal or regulatory advice.