Home Forums Discussions General Discussion How to save custom sigs

Tonight I was playing around with prescribing (as a potential purchaser) and could not make my custom sig for a prednisone taper "stick". When I closed out the prescribing window and went back to prescribe predisone, the custom taper I'd typed out was nowhere to be seen. I had expected to see it in the dropdown sig list. How can custom sigs be stored for easy use later?

Thanks. Basheer

Hello,

Welcome to AC.

I believe in order for it to work, you have to actually "prescribe" the medication - ie print or fax it or perhaps save the note first (that is when allergies finally show up...after the note is saved).

If I'm wrong...I'm sure someone will correct me

Barbara

Basheer,

Yes, you do have to save the note before the Allergies show up, which is a big problem I think they are working on. In order for the sig to "stick" you simply have to either push the update button and close the prescription writer or click the update button and choose new med.

There is a common misconception that sigs which are written are then saved in the dropdown box below the medication in the script writer. This is not so. The sigs below will always be the same on every AC on every computer everywhere. When a sig or number dispensed or number of refills is automatically populated, it is because of the registry entries after meds are prescribed. Each time a new medication is prescribed, the medication, sig, number dispensed and refills each become MedList0, SigList0, NoList0 and RFList0 respectively to become first in line of 54 drugs associated in the same way. At times, AC becomes confused when there is a Prednisone at position 1 and at the same time a Prednisone at position 24. Whichever one it chooses, it will associate the four zeroes or the four 24s.

If you write a taper, it should autopopulate for that taper every time unless, of course, there is another entry for Prednisone which there probably will be if you use Prednisone a lot. You can always manually change the registry or even go in and wipe out all of the entries.

You could copy and paste from a notepad on your PC or my recommendation would be to invest in Shortkeys, an inexpensive program which allows one to replace sequences such as Alt-P as your sig for Prednisone.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Barbara and Bert. I was able to get the sig to stick by saving the chart, but not by using Update/close. I'll try again to see what happens.

Once you've actually prescribed it that way, it will be in your pull-down list as the default way to write that medication until you prescribe it differently. It only updates though when you actually prescribe the medication.

V.

But, that is not his question. His taper of Prednisone will NOT populate the pull-down list. Yes, the Prednisone tablets will be remembered in the medication dropdown list and if that medication is chosen the rest of the fields will fill in the exact same way as before.

So to be a little crazy, if you write:

Koolaid flavored drink

Give one 8 ounce glass daily

Disp 1 pitcher Refills 5

then whether you type Koolaid or pick it from the dropdown list, the sig will be filled in the way it was last time UNLESS you have Koolaid written before and it is in the registry.

So, the sig is completely dependent on the medication chosen, and is not in the dropdown list for sigs. You can look in the dropdown list for "Give one 8 ounce glass daily," and you will NEVER see it in the sig dropdown list. It will be located in the registry, which is where it is associated with the medication.

It's the same with the refills. If you type any medication and give 500 refills, once again if you type the same medication, it will usually populate the refill box with the number 500. But the only things you will see in the dropdown box are:

None, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 11. PRN 1 MO., PRN 3 MO., PRN 6 MO. and PRN 12 MO. There will never be any other refill choices in the dropdown box. Again, to be clear, if you put in 27 refills for a medication you wrote, the next time you write it, 27 will show up. But, not because it was in the dropdown box, and it won't be there.

Also, for clarifiction, and both Barbara and Vinny are correct about this, you must prescribe the medication for the sig, number dispensed and refills to be saved to the registry, but that means clicking on the Update/Prescribe button. You do not have to actually close the prescription writer or print the medication.

Finally, if you type Prednisone with a taper on Computer 1, after you prescribe 54 other medications, the sig, number dispensed and refills will be deleted from the registry, so if the sig were extremely complicated you may want to acquire Shortkeys or copy and paste from your PC.

Bert, thanks for the detailed answer. I have a better understanding of it now.

Anytime. If you ever want to change the the registry settings, let me know. I don't know how helpful that would be, however.