Just curious- What do you use on the floor?

[MJB2010]

Paper MARS or the computerized scanner? ALl throughout nursing school clinicals we used the computers for med administration and now I am working at a hospital that uses paper MARS.

ANd for charting- paper or electronic?

[Sun0408, ASN, RN]

Electronic for both at my facility..

[April, RN, BSN, RN]

Paper MARS or the computerized scanner? ALl throughout nursing school clinicals we used the computers for med administration and now I am working at a hospital that uses paper MARS.

ANd for charting- paper or electronic?

This happened to me, too. I felt so silly as a new grad because I barely knew how to use the MAR and flowsheets since the hospital where I did all my clinicals at was completely paperless. My hospital has since gone electronic though.

[RaziRN]

Paper, paper, paper, big waste of time paper!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i'm in the icu. i've been using computerized charting for over a decade, and i loved it at my last job. at my current job, however, we've changed charting software three times in the past five years. right now, we're charting in three different software programs -- one for point of care testing (it talks to the lab program), one for medications (it talks to the pharmacy program) and one for vital signs, i & o, assessments and notes. doctor's orders are in a fourth program. next month we go live on yet another charting program -- this one is supposed to talk to lab, pharmacy and the order entry programs so that we'll only have to chart in one program. hopefully it will work out as planned. i'm not holding my breath. we already know that it won't have the macros we're used to using so we're going to have to enter in a lot of stuff manually that we're used to being able to enter with one click by opening a macro. there's no plan to ever have macros for our use.

the committee in charge of developing and implementing this new software nightmare (i've just had my class on it's use, and it promises to be a real nightmare) have made no bones about the fact that they're going for ease of use for physicians and pharmacy. "we're not trying to make it easy for nursing," they announced in one of their meetings. "nursing will just have to adapt."

i'm adaptable, i really am. but i'd much rather just chart on paper than go through all of this learning curve yet again. and nursing administration has already announced that this is just a "3 month trial" on this software before they decide whether to use this or go for something else . . . sigh!

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

Computerized MAR, no scanner

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

some depts are all electronic and some are paper. We are progressing towards all electronic but it is an expensive venture and we are easing into it gradually. We do have Pyxis

[Badger4lfe262]

We have electronic scanners that also have some charting flow sheets so we can do pain assessment, med administration, acknowledge orders etc.

[Sarah010101]

New Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Center is set up to be paperless with computers at bedsides and everything. We print the sheets off.. and fill them all in.. bad bad i know!

[belgarion]

Reading the title of the thread my first instinct was to say "Mr. Clean".

We print off a paper copy of the MAR for reference and planning purposes. As far as med passes we drag around these COWs that always seem to want to go about 90 degrees from where you need it. They have scanners on them but the scanners aren't compatible with the bar codes on the ID bracelets. We are supposedly getting a new system in soon. I for one am breathless with anticipation.

Yeah, right.

[opensesame]

E-charting, E-MARS with bar-code scanning, electronic order entry for the MDs. Our bedside monitors dump VS and IV drip rates into our E-charts which is fabulous.

[Up2nogood RN, RN]

All electronic for everything with scanners/computers at bedside.

I have a perdiem job where there are paper mars/charts. Ugh I hate checking MARS and chart checks.