Efficiency through better documentation

Most shifts I would guess that I spend more time in front of the EMR writing orders, checking results, and documenting care than I do in front of the patient. I am in a patient’s electronic chart than in their room.

For that reason, one of the best ways to improve your efficiency and efficacy is by speeding up your documentation. Likely your EMR does have ways you can customize your order sets and documentation templates to potentially improve your efficiency, but I find these mostly substitute writing or dictating with thousands of mouse clicks. For example, many procedure templates are available with clickable drop-down menus and boxes that rarely save me any time and change whenever upgrades to the software occur.

In my experience, my custom templates have always been faster, and I will argue safer, than the software EMR alternatives.

Still not convinced??? Please read and refer back to this page when asking yourself if you should start making and using your own documentation templates, and to support this, I will regularly share and make my own documentation templates available for free or to purchase at very low cost. Use my versions as a starting point for how you will create your own bank of templates you can continue to customize as you move forward in your career and take with you to any job you start.