Smiley faces, fax machines and test tubes we understand… but why were so many doctors putting the emoji for a bowl of rice in their notes?
It turns out that doctors and nurses love an emoji as much as the next person, with new research published in JAMA Network Open finding no less than 372 distinct emojis used within 4162 notes at one US health service.
The practice is so rife that at least one emoji appeared in every four patient notes, which were all created between 2020 and 2025.
Members of the clinical team, rather than patients or their family, were responsible for introducing emojis into the notes 90% of the time, and patients or their family tended to be the most common intended recipient.
Most of the time, emojis were used to punctuate a sentence (e.g. ‘have a wonderful day đŸŒˆ) rather than being connected to a specific word or as a piece of information.
Of course, the question on everyone’s lips is: what are the most popular emoji?
On that point, the researchers delivered.
Out of the 50 most frequently used emoji, the most common by far was the smiling face with smiling eyes, followed by the telephone receiver and the calendar.
But while most of the common emoji are at least marginally health-related or could be plausibly used as part of a message to a patient from a doctor or nurse, there are a few which stick out as particularly confusing.
The sixth-most common emoji, for instance, is a maple leaf.
Where one could foresee a situation in which a health care worker may put in the bathtub and soap emoji, or one where running shoes and a person doing yoga may make perfect sense, the popularity of the bowl of rice emoji is somewhat baffling.
The cooked rice emoji was identified 55 times, more than the hospital and the face with thermometer emoji put together.
One wonders how the eyeroll emoji failed to get a mention.
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