copyright 2005,  Welford Medical Computing, Inc.  All rights reserved

USING APPOINTMENT COMMENTS (User's Manual, pg. 865-866)

Although you can record an individual Comment for each appointment in its Comment field, you may wish to record a general comment that applies to an entire day. For example, you might wish to remind your staff to keep a certain day's schedule lighter for a particular reason. Let's record such a Comment:

1. Press View\Appointments.

2. Set the Date to the day that you want to have a Comment (if you are displaying 1 Day at a time); or set the Date such that the day you want to comment upon is visible, then click on that date (on the top, gray row of the Scheduler).

3. Press Edit\Comment, or double-click your mouse on the column heading that day.

4. Type in the Comment, e.g. "Keep light - staff training" and press Ok.

5. Note that the Comment now appears in red on the top row of the grid just after the date. If you want to read the full Comment, simply double-click on it to re-open the Comment Editor, where you can also revise it. If you want to delete it, simply erase the text, then press Ok.

FORMULARY PREFERRED DRUGS (User's Manual, pgs. 868-869)

When editing Formularies, it is often more convenient to list which drugs in a class the Formulary prefers, rather than listing the ones it does not prefer, since many formularies have only a small number of drugs in a class that it prefers or permits. Let's see how this works:

1. Press Links\Formularies.

2. Enter a Formulary Name, such as "Hospital", and choose the Site(s) it applies to, such as Hospital.

3. Press Edit to start editing this Formulary.

4. Suppose your hospital prefers LEVOFLOXACIN as its fluoroquinolone, and forbids use of the others. Well, you could enter CINOXACIN as a Drug Name, with a Status of Forbidden, then enter LEVOFLOXACIN as the Preferred Drug; then repeat this process for CIPROFLOXACIN, ENOXACIN, GATIFLOXACIN, and all of the other fluoroquinolones, but this would be time consuming. Also, if a new fluoroquinolone comes on the market, you would have to remember to add it to this Formulary as a forbidden drug.

5. So, instead, for Drug Name, type in LEVOFLOXACIN, and set the Status to Preferred. There is nothing you need to type in for Preferred Drugs, because levofloxacin IS the preferred drug. You can type in an Explanation if you want to. Then press Ok to store it.

This feature saves lots of time in cases where there is only one or a few preferred drugs. (If your hospital permitted 2 quinolones, simply type the other one in now as another drug with Status of Preferred). You can still use the same Formulary to store some drugs as Forbidden or Less preferred if the Formulary permits most of the drugs in a particular class and forbids only one or a few. Just use whichever method is the easiest and quickest for each drug class!

MOVING MESSAGES (User's Manual, pg. 873)

If you store a Message about a specific patient and choose the wrong patient, you will want to move that Message to the correct patient. And if you happen to choose the wrong patient for all of the Messages for a particular patient, you will want to move all of them to the correct patient. Let's see how this works.

1. Press Name\Add and add a patient named Kelly Erickson; press Ok to store it.

2. Press Name\Add and add a patient named Kelly Ericson (note the last name has no "k"); press Ok to store it.

3. Press Write\Messages\New.

4. For Patient, enter Kelly Ericson.

5. For Message, type "test #1" and press Send to send it. Choose Internal Only and press Ok.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 above, now using "test #2" as the Message and send it.

7. Now, log on as the user to whom you sent these Messages. Press Write\Messages. Pretend you now notice these Messages and realize they should have been about Kelly Erickson, not Kelly Ericson.

8. Press Move. You have two choices:

9. Choose All Messages for One Patient. and press Yes when asked if you are sure. You must then supply the Master Password.

10. For Move Messages From:, enter KELLY ERICSON and press Ok.

11. For Move Messages To:, enter KELLY ERICKSON and press Ok.

12. When asked if you are SURE you want to move Messages from Kelly Ericson to Kelly Erickson, press Yes.

13. Note that after the program says "Messages successfully moved", the names have changed in your Messages display from Kelly Ericson to Kelly Erickson. Mission accomplished!

We are putting the finishing touches on version 4.8, which is chock full of new features you are sure to find useful, especially dose checking for patients with renal and liver disease.