Work outside of work: after-hours use of the electronic medical record among residents at an academic veterinary teaching hospital.

The electronic medical record (EMR) is a major contributor to clinician workload, with substantial documentation often occurring outside scheduled patient care hours. In human medicine, after-hours EMR use has been associated with clinician burnout, yet it has not been objectively quantified among veterinary residents. The purpose of this study was to quantify after-hours EMR use among veterinary residents, to compare this across specialties and years of training, and to establish baseline metrics for future studies evaluating documentation efficiency and workflow interventions. EMR login metadata were extracted for 39 residents representing seven specialties at a single academic veterinary teaching hospital between July 2023 and July 2024. Rule-based algorithms quantified weekday after-hours use (pajama time; PJT) and weekend time (WT; weekend EMR use). Repeated-measures hurdle models were used to evaluate associations between specialty, residency year, and after-hours EMR use. Specialty was significantly associated with both the likelihood and duration of after-hours EMR use (p < 0.001). Radiology residents consistently demonstrated the lowest after-hours EMR use, whereas residents in surgery, cardiology, neurology, and small animal internal medicine accumulated substantially greater after-hours EMR time. Among residents who used the EMR during after-hours time, median weekday PJT was 13.57 h/month and median weekend EMR use was 23.38 h/month. First-year residents were more likely than third-year residents to access the EMR during weekday PJT (OR 4.57, 95% CI 1.69-12.36; p = 0.002), although the duration of after-hours EMR use did not differ by residency year. Veterinary residents spend substantial time using the EMR outside scheduled working hours, with marked variation across specialties. Objective EMR metadata provide a scalable, objective approach for quantifying documentation workload and establishes a baseline for evaluating interventions aimed at improving workflow efficiency and documentation practices within veterinary training programs.