I know about the HELP option, but I have difficulty imagining a medical office w/o multiple exam rooms having patients in various stages of H&P and procedures. I'd think that this would be a necessity rather than something to first request now.
This is just one of many compromises that happen when adopting an electronic record. There are real technical reasons for this... for example, record locking is necessary because two people editing a record at once gives a database a nervous breakdown... but it does not make it happy for us. However, we are adaptable creatures, and I found eventually I stopped grumbling and altered my practice pattern to accommodate these sorts of things. I do wish I had more of the feeling of being the master and not the slave to the computer.
