What is Pyjama time?
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Pyjama time is the unpaid hours clinicians spend finishing clinical notes, letters and admin at home after the working day ends — named for being done in pyjamas, after dinner, often with a laptop on the sofa. It's one of the most consistent burnout drivers reported across UK clinical practice.
The phrase came out of electronic health record research in general practice and spread because every clinician recognised it instantly. In private and allied health practice it shows up as the same pattern: a full treating diary leaves no daytime gaps, so documentation migrates to evenings — practice owners tell us about "doing notes while cooking dinner for the children".
Beyond the personal cost, pyjama-time notes are clinically worse: written hours after the encounter, from memory, in a hurry. The detail and reasoning that make a record defensible are exactly what evening batching erodes — which is why documentation quality and clinician wellbeing are usually the same problem wearing two coats.
The fix is structural, not motivational: documentation has to happen during or immediately after the encounter without stealing treatment time. That's the job of an AI medical scribe — the note drafts itself from the consultation, and review takes minutes in clinic rather than hours at home.