OB TraceVue

sorry never heard of it....good luck to you, karen!

Karen,

Hi there! the last facility that I was working at was also a LDRP unit that was using Ob tracevue. I thought it was a great system and it made charting so much easier. The facility I was at had a computer in each pt room, as well as one in the nursery and one at the nurses station. I LOVED IT!!! You will love it too! The only draw backs to this system were that you were not able to pull off a FHT strip and look at it from start to finsih,however you are able to scoll back and look at the strip. Also there was no where to chart for the baby postpartum checks and assessments(we charted on clipboards that were hanging off the baby's crib). I now work at a unit that does not use this system and it kinda sucks, I really miss the ease of the old way! I liked charting on the clipboard much better than having to document all feedings, BM's and voids and assessments in a computer. I think you will love OB tracevue, it is very user friendly I learned it the first day I started on my old unit. I wish my hospital that I am currently working at would get OB tracevue! Good Luck to you!

Thanks for the info Denise. We re all excited about using the new system.

Hey! I am very familiar w/OBTV, and it's a good system. Very user friendly, once you get used to it.

We still have 'paper' strips, so we never ran into the problem of not being able to view a strip from beginning to end. I also like the fact that you can look at a patient's other visits and see what the tracing looked like before. On that note, I also love that you can see the clinic visits if it's linked to the clinic and see what ACTUALLY happened at clinic the day before (you know how patients will 'fudge' what the doctor said in an attempt to be induced....grrr). Nice feature. And I like how you can type notes in the pt.'s chart that can be viewed by the clinic nurses so they can see what happened to the pt. at the hospital. It really helps w/interagency communication.

The not being able to chart pp/newborn info is a pain in the butt. Supposedly there is a piece to go with the software that has this capability, but I have yet to see it.

I don't like the instability of the 'quick admit' feature and the difficulty merging quick admits with existing clients. I also didn't like the *#@!! trackball mice. Sorry, I hate those dang things. Petty, I know. :) I also hated the fact that my facility mandates you print out a hard copy of the entire chart once the patient is delivered. Gimme a friggin' break. Kill a few thousand trees, why don't we?

Anyhoo, overall it's a good system and I like it a lot.

have not heard of it before...

currently use a computerized system but still run 'paper strips' for backup and that "looking thru the strip" ability!

also, unfortunately, found that the paper strip makes a great 'time line' for maternal Code 99!

We have OB TraceVU where I work. There are many good things about the system and the cons are mostly listed above. There are also several versions of this system. The first version had lots of false alarms and missed alarms plus the system was down frequently. They said if we upgraded to the next version, all these problems would go away. We did. They didn't. We have now planned to get Revision C. which they almost guarantee will solve the false alarms and missed alarms and shut downs. We'll see. We do like the ease of documentation that the system allows. Our hospital uses Meditech for all other areas and there is now a interface between OBVU and Meditech that allows BOTH to be on the desktop and for nursing to toggle between both. That will allow those PP and newborn assessments etc to be charted in computer at the bedside. If the Rev. C solves all the alarming problems, cutting the "down" time of the central system, we will be thrilled.

It is a good system and there are less problems with it than with some of the others like Child Watch or is it Watched child?? Don't know at this time of day. The Marquette system is NOT without problems too. If you like the Phillips monitors, you will like the system. Hope your customer service folks are more prompt and attentive than ours is. We use paper strips too but do not print off things to the paper chart yet.

Hi Karen,

Please check out the post that I posted today (8/8) called "Computer Charting"...We've had some major glitches that you should look at. I'm also looking for some input on this system...

Best wishes,

Michelle

we use OBTV over all i really like it. we are still able to get strpis, we can also scroll through strip on computer, and it has a neat print feature where it stores strips and you can print out whole strip or just sections of it. I really dislike the track ball be have on our computers they are either too sensitive or end up sticking all the time. but over all i like it a lot.

Any one using OBTV for their care plans? We have been using OBTV for charting labor but have just purchased the newborn package to start charting newborn and pp in OBTV. any one done that yet, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

I used OB tracevue at my last hospital, loved it. The hospital I'm at now uses GE Ique, its much less user friendly and repetitive!

We have one of the original programs of OBTV and use it primarily for surveillance due to no back-up optical disk and the hospital has not kept up the updates. At first the system would crash frequently, but after the first 1-2 years, other than the system getting old, it rarely has problems. We are currently looking at updating our current system to allow full charting and compliance with JCAHO standards. Traceview is making changes to reflect the AWHONN changes recently put into place, but according to the rep this may still take awhile. We are torn between the QS sytem and updating the Traceview. Both have their pro's and con's and it may come down to the cost. If you are familiar with the pro's and con's of these two systems, or have worked with both systems, help would be appreciated.

As far as paper strips go, a recent survey from MHA, our ins. provider, they are recommending that paper strips continue. I heard that the OBTV is not a perfect match to paper strips like the QS system, and admit the strip often looks much different than the computer strip with our current system.