Page Contents
OVERVIEW
Placing orders is a fundamental skill that is applied to the electronic medical record. It is a task that many are expected to perform immediately when starting on a service, however often times no one is shown how to properly place orders or ways in which placing orders can be made less painful. This page is dedicated to going over some of these concepts.
This page includes tutorial videos in each of its sections (that demonstrates how to conduct these techniques on the UCSF EPIC EMR system). All of these videos can be found in this folder here.
*While the preview feature for these videos may not work on certain mobile browsers, the videos can still be viewed if they are given time to load/the page is refreshed.
HOW TO PLACE ORDERS (INTRO)
Even just the basic act of how to place an order should be something one is familiar with ideally before they are expected to place orders. While not overly complicated this can be nuanced.
Watch a video here on how to place orders (demonstrated on the UCSF EPIC EMR)
HOW TO PEND ORDERS
Pending orders essentially refers to saving the orders to be placed later. There are a few ways this can be done. Sometimes orders can be pended in a fashion where only the user pending them can view them, or they can be saved for other users to later use.
Watch a video here on how to pend orders (demonstrated on the UCSF EPIC EMR)
It may not be intuitive, but the ability to pend orders can save significant amounts of time for both yourself and/or others. It can be thought of as streamlining the process for placing orders that will need to be placed at a later time.
HOW TO ORDER DAILY LABS/HOW TO FAVORITE ORDERS
These next concepts go hand in hand together. Often times labs will need to be ordered every day for a patient, however certain EMR systems allow for users to create a recurring order (so the labs will not have to be ordered each time). Similarly, users may be able to favorite such orders so they will be able to order them more easily in the future for other patients.
Ordering labs that are needed daily in this fashion can save time and also can ensure more reliable rounding patterns. Furthermore, favoriting orders is a concept that can often times be applied to a wide variety of different orders or order sets.
HOW TO ORGANIZE FAVORITED ORDERS
While it is useful to save/favorite orders as you go in the chart, certain EMR systems will have a section where you can organize your favorited orders very neatly into different sections. This can be very helpful because organized custom orders can save a tremendous amount of time based upon specific clinical contexts.
SHARING CUSTOM ORDERS WITH OTHERS
Just like smart phrases custom orders can also be shared with other users (depending upon which EMR system is being utilized). This is another time saver because once useful custom orders are made they can be shared with many other users (and no one will have to create the orders again from scratch).
Watch a video here on how to share custom orders between users (demonstrated on the UCSF EPIC EMR)
USING FAVORITED ORDERS
It is a simple concept however making sure one knows how to utilize custom orders in the chart is critical. Few things are more frustrating then putting effort into making custom orders then not being able to find them to use!
Watch a video here on how to use custom orders (demonstrated on the UCSF EPIC EMR)
EXAMPLES OF CUSTOM ORDERS: GASTROGRAFFIN ORDER PANEL
There are many examples of the value of making custom orders in the EMR. One very clear example is making a custom gastrograffin order panel. This avoids having to put in many tediously timed x-rays every time one has to order a gastrograffin challenge.
Watch a video here on using a custom gastrograffin order panel (demonstrated on the UCSF EPIC EMR)
Page Updated: 06.15.2019