My top ten tips in EMIS

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2002. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

These are my favourite tips that I use almost every day and have picked up over the last two years using EMIS. Some of them I wish I had known from the beginning; some have become useful as I got more experienced. Some have been gleaned from the pages of EMIS User, or from the EMIS list, or from personal experimentation. My thanks to the original contributors - I make no apologies for repeating them in case you haven’t seen them.

We use practice notes for all internal communications about patients. This has the advantage of keeping an audit trail with their record in case of future arguments. It is surprising the number of people I have told/reminded that you can use the F3 key to go straight from a note into that patient’s record, and then using F1 brings you back into the notes screen.

I have found the audit trail option in practice note management options very useful on those occasions when I have forgotten the name of a patient I was recently noted about and have completed the note. You can get it to display all notes you have created or completed on any one day.

I wish I had known earlier that I could use the R key in appointments to review a patient’s medical record. This is especially useful when doing a surgery in CM mode, when I want to have a quick look at who is coming next without having to keep cancelling empty consultations.

In a similar vein, we were having quite a few blank consultations entered into the CM screen as people went in and out of the CM screen filing empty consultations. It was then pointed out there is a setting that reminds the user the consultation is blank and questions whether it really needs to be saved. This is terminal specific and needs to be set throughout the practice.

Fed up of typing MR then C to get into the consultation record? I was, until I was told that you can use CZ instead, or DZ to get into the diary; others also work.

I find the customisable icons at the top of the LV screen very useful. I have links to a calculator, a pregnancy calculator, Word, Excel, and several web pages including an online Ishihara test.

You can add comments after drugs on the PR screen that don’t print out on the script by typing / after C when adding a new drug. For example “C/not to have any more without seeing me” or “C/must have pill check before longer prescription”.

For some reason it was ages before I realised I could change a drug from an acute to a repeat without issuing it, by using the J option.

I can never remember doses for different age groups, so I find the F4 key invaluable in prescribing. For common drugs I put the age range in brackets after the dose instructions. I can then access this using the F4 key. It does print out onto the script, but nobody has ever complained. I know Quickeys will give the same functionality but I have never got round to using it.

I have only just realised that when using the lab links module, if you highlight certain lines in the result using the space bar, they appear in the text on the CM screen. I now use this to highlight any abnormal results so I can remember them when I next see the person.