Electronic medical records?

BroadwayRN, ASN, RN · Feb 7, 2009

I'm not in OB but we are also going completely paperless in a couple of months. I still can't invision how all of this will work. Time will tell.

nursejohio, ASN, RN · Feb 7, 2009

I'll pray you're going to something better than the Epic we're using. It's a nightmare

Katie82, RN · Feb 7, 2009

EMRs are not something that arrives overnight, but is transitioned in over months or years, usually one system at a time, especially to a paperless system. I worked for a health care organization that transitioned to paperless and we brought in departments (lab, pharmacy, radiology) one at a time. If you are actually a month away from paperless, all these departments are probably on line already. The greatest challenge to paperless is the task of scanning existing records, which has probably been taking place for some time also. In your case, you will also need records from the provider offices, would sure help if they have an EMR that interfaces.Have you had training yet? Another time-consuming issue. Just relax and go with the flow, once you are paperless you will love it. I was a practice manager in a large hospital system when we made the transition, and my greatest challenge was working through the anxiety of my staff. The government wants us all on EMRs, which will make all our lives easier. A year from now you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

jmgrn65, RN · Feb 7, 2009

I'll pray you're going to something better than the Epic we're using. It's a nightmare

What makes Epic a nightmare? how long have you been using it. We are getting ready to a new system it is narrowed down to two systems, epic being one of them.

morte, LPN, LVN · Feb 7, 2009

EMRs are not something that arrives overnight, but is transitioned in over months or years, usually one system at a time, especially to a paperless system. I worked for a health care organization that transitioned to paperless and we brought in departments (lab, pharmacy, radiology) one at a time. If you are actually a month away from paperless, all these departments are probably on line already. The greatest challenge to paperless is the task of scanning existing records, which has probably been taking place for some time also. In your case, you will also need records from the provider offices, would sure help if they have an EMR that interfaces.Have you had training yet? Another time-consuming issue. Just relax and go with the flow, once you are paperless you will love it. I was a practice manager in a large hospital system when we made the transition, and my greatest challenge was working through the anxiety of my staff. The government wants us all on EMRs, which will make all our lives easier. A year from now you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

but we did live without it.....and a hacker in california couldnt see MY records on the east coast...the same cant be said for emr

AlabamaBelle · Feb 7, 2009

We just went to EMR in November. At the same time,we also went live with scanning meds with a handheld scanning unit.

There will probably be a time of training trainers, then training for the rest of the employees will begin. This will take a few months, then you'll go live. Ours went okay, there were a few glitches and we still find some glitches and working on those.

Our L & D and post-partum used QS prior our conversion to Cerner. They have compared it with going from a Rolls-Royce to a Pinto. QS is still utilized for fetal monitoring, but all othe documentation is via Cerner.

We are all still trying to adjust, and many changes are in the works that will hopefully make it better. We have bedside monitor interface, so with a click or two, our vitals flow over (wonderful for those Q15min) and our I/Os are calculated from what we've entered via the E-MAR.

It will be hard at first, but it will get better.

Nighshft · Feb 9, 2009

Right now we still use QS for our fetal monitoring, We have a doc that has bwwn able to add what we need to it for our L&D charting. He keeps adding different items so that it is almost all we need for the L&D part of it - has taken forever. We are now going to use SUNRISE for the hospital electronic records, but that is going to be phased in over the next few years. This is being done to comply with the federal directive for EMR

bookscrapper · Feb 10, 2009

For 2 of my 4 semester is nursing school we did all electronic charting. It was great. At my current job we're about 50% with the rest to come here "shortly."

I really liked the EMR because you can easily look at H&Ps, notes from doctor's offices, medication histories, other nurses' notes, etc. You can graph trends in vitals or lab values. I really liked the care plan charting for progress notes. Plus there's tons of patient education info accessible and documented right there that it was given to the patient as well as being able to print out discharge instructions/teaching/meds.

I miss the system we used in school but am getting used to Cerner - PowerChart. Everything just takes time.

TRINI_RN · Feb 17, 2009

I'll pray you're going to something better than the Epic we're using. It's a nightmare

Oh boy, epic is EXACTLY what we are going to. :bugeyes:

TRINI_RN · Feb 17, 2009

EMRs are not something that arrives overnight, but is transitioned in over months or years, usually one system at a time, especially to a paperless system. I worked for a health care organization that transitioned to paperless and we brought in departments (lab, pharmacy, radiology) one at a time. If you are actually a month away from paperless, all these departments are probably on line already. The greatest challenge to paperless is the task of scanning existing records, which has probably been taking place for some time also. In your case, you will also need records from the provider offices, would sure help if they have an EMR that interfaces.Have you had training yet? Another time-consuming issue. Just relax and go with the flow, once you are paperless you will love it. I was a practice manager in a large hospital system when we made the transition, and my greatest challenge was working through the anxiety of my staff. The government wants us all on EMRs, which will make all our lives easier. A year from now you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

We have had 2 days of training in class, and now we have to practice at work when there is down time. The training was ok, but I think it would have been a lot better if it was department focused instead of just directed to medsurg. I, as well as nurses in other departments (ICU, BTU, Pacu) had a lot of questions about how to apply the program to our specific department.