A Veterinarian’s Take: The Real Cost of Taking Charts Home

I still remember one night in particular.

The kids were finally asleep. The house was quiet in that fragile way that only happens when everyone is completely spent. I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and a mug of tea that had already gone cold, telling myself I would just knock out one or two records before bed. I would get up early the next morning and finish the rest. 

As soon as I opened the first chart and started typing, my phone rang. Oh, right… I’m on call again. I said a quick prayer to the on-call gods and hoped the call was not serious, but luck was not on my side, as an emergency C-section was needed.

I paused. Closed my eyes. Took a deep breath, the kind you take when you are already running on empty, and you know there is no choice but to keep going.

I grabbed my raincoat from the hook by the door. (Why is it always raining when you get called in after hours?) I moved quietly down the hallway and leaned over the crib, gently kissing my infant’s forehead, careful not to wake them. That moment lingered longer than usual, a tiny pause between doctor and mom; between responsibility and reality.

And then I was out the door. Again.

Not only was I charting after hours, but I was doing it while being on call. Carrying two jobs at once: one visible, and one quietly expected.

At the time, it felt normal. Hard, but normal. This is what committed veterinarians do. We make it work. We miss our baby’s first steps. We miss weddings. We cancel dates. We push through. We catch up later. 

It took me years as a hospital owner to understand what that night was really costing me. I’ve now owned vet hospitals for over a decade and I can tell you with confidence that taking charts home is not just a personal inconvenience. It is one of the most expensive habits in veterinary medicine.

And I do not mean financially. At least not at first.

The first cost is time.

When charts go home, they expand to fill whatever space you give them. They take over evenings, weekends, and early mornings. They creep into vacations. They turn days off into partial workdays and quiet moments into mental checklists. You are never fully off, which means you never fully recharge.

That time is not neutral. It is borrowed from something else.

Time and attention are our most valuable and most finite resources. When we spend time on one activity, we are implicitly choosing not to spend it on another. An extra hour emptying an inbox or finishing records is an hour not spent at the dinner table, not spent sleeping, not spent doing the things that make us feel human outside of medicine.

Over time, that tradeoff adds up.

It is borrowed from sleep, from family dinners, from hobbies and routines that remind you who you are beyond your role as a doctor. It’s borrowed from the mental space required to actually recover between shifts instead of simply surviving them.

We talk a lot about burnout in veterinary medicine, but we rarely talk about the daily habits that quietly fuel it. Taking charts home is one of the most normalized and least questioned contributors.

The second cost is cognitive load.

Finishing records hours after a visit forces your brain to do unnecessary work. You are asking yourself to remember details that were clear in the moment but blurry later. You second-guess phrasing. You reread previous notes to reorient yourself. You spend energy reconstructing instead of documenting.

This is not a reflection of work ethic or intelligence. It is a systems problem.

When documentation is disconnected from care delivery, you create friction that doctors absorb personally. Over time, that friction shows up as mental fatigue, decision fatigue, and a constant feeling of being behind - even on good days.

The third cost is emotional spillover.

When charts follow you home, work never really ends. The emotional weight of cases does not have a clear boundary. A hard outcome from earlier in the day can resurface at night while you are typing the record. A conversation you wish you had handled differently gets replayed while you are trying to finish SOAP notes.

This matters more than we admit.

Veterinary medicine already asks us to carry a lot emotionally. When documentation extends the day, it extends that emotional exposure as well. There is no clean transition from doctor to human.

Over time, that blurring takes a toll.

The fourth cost is leadership credibility.

As a hospital owner, this one hits close to home.

When doctors are regularly taking charts home, it sends an unspoken message to the rest of the team that staying late is expected. Finishing work on personal time is normal. The system is fixed, and the burden is personal.

Even if you never say those words, culture is shaped by what is tolerated and repeated.

I have learned that you cannot sustainably preach work-life balance while structurally requiring after-hours documentation. Teams see that disconnect clearly, even when leadership does not.

The fifth cost is retention.

Good doctors leave not because they do not love medicine, but because they cannot keep absorbing invisible labor. Charting at home is unpaid work in everything but name. It erodes the feeling that the job fits inside a life.

When someone finally leaves, we often attribute it to stress, workload, or personal reasons. Rarely do we trace it back to the daily reality of unfinished records and borrowed evenings.

But it is connected.

I am not writing this to shame anyone. I did this for years. Many of us did. In some practices, it felt unavoidable. In others, it was so normalized that it was never questioned.

What I am saying now, as someone who has lived on both sides, is that taking charts home is not a badge of dedication. It should be seen as a signal.

It signals that workflows are not aligned with how medicine is actually practiced. It signals that documentation tools are asking doctors to work around them instead of with them. It signals that the day is structured in a way that prioritizes volume instead of flow.

The solution is not telling doctors to type faster, stay later, or be more disciplined.

The solution is designing days, tools, and expectations that allow records to be completed while the visit is still happening. While the context is fresh. While the team is present. While the work still belongs to the workday.

This is not about perfection. It is about containment.

When records stay in the building, something shifts. The day feels more complete. Even hard days end cleanly. Doctors leave with fewer loose ends pulling at them from home.

As a hospital owner, I have learned that protecting that boundary is not indulgent. It is operationally sound. It reduces errors. It improves morale. It makes the job feel survivable again.

The real cost of taking charts home is not the extra hour at night. It is the slow erosion of energy, identity, and sustainability that happens when work never truly ends.

We can do better than accept that as normal.

And we should.