Printing your note in theatre
In surgical practice, your op note is needed more or less immediately after the operation is finished. Recovery staff need it NOW and our software presents you with a nicely formatted PDF.
If you need to print the op note, you have 3 options:
- Almost all recovery suites have printers. Asking the IT people to provide you with access (usually over the doctor wifi network) to the recovery room printer is the ideal solution. We have written a sample correspondence that you might use below, and are happy to communicate directly with your hospital IT or theatre team.
- You can bring your own printer to the operation suite. This is quite a widespread practice in Australia, but is obviously not an ideal solution. Printers however are cheap, and as a solution it works.
- Ask your theatre team to provide you with a secure hospital email destination for your note (i.e. the recovery suite email address), from which the note can be printed by the recovery staff.
Below is a sample correspondence template you might like to use.
Dear IT Department (or theatre manager).
I'm <<Dr. Firstname Lastname>>, and regularly operate at <<Hospital Name>> that uses a paper based clinical note record.
I now use a digital op note which I create on my own device after the operation at all hospitals in which I work. This note can then be printed and stored in your paper record. The digitised note improves patient care - it is legible, detailed and far superior to the generic proforma of the hospital.
As the recovery room staff need a paper copy of the note immediately after the operation, I need access to a printer for my device. This might be in recovery (preferable), the admin office or another convenient location. There is some urgency to get this set up and I would appreciate your help.
Other hospitals have added the printer to the doctors wireless network, a simple solution that works very well.
Please call or email me direct if this requires further explanation.
Many thanks for your help,
<<Dr. Firstname Lastname>>