EPIC Charting

[Roosevelt85]

Hello everyone, I was wondering if any of you folks use EPIC to chart all your notes, procedures, etc. We just started it 4 weeks ago and unfortunately I was out with a bad contact dermatitis for the first week. We are all overwhelmed with so much information to enter in such a short time. We use to do primary care nursing from pre-op, intra-op and post-op/recovery including discharge. We also use to document on paper. Now with the start of EPIC charting we are handing patients off to another nurse in each phase of care. Instead of a patient having one nurse, they have 3 nurses. We all feel there is too much time wasted doing handoff of care and it just adds to the stress. It's like an assembly line. We are moved to a different position every week to learn that area of charting on EPIC. We have 9 areas that we rotate to each week.

They are keeping the EPIC support people for one more week to help us navigate through the system to get a better handle of it. Unfortunately, I am on vacation next week.

The reason for this long post is to ask if anyone has some helpful tips for me regarding EPIC charting and how to navigate around it quickly?

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

I've used Epic for years, but the problem is that it is extremely customizable. The Epic interface that my hospital uses may look nothing like where you are documenting. Are you primarily using flowsheets? Have they built the peri-op areas their own navigator? Is anesthesia using the Epic Anesthesia for their intraprocedure documentation?