Home Forums ShortKeys and Templates

Leslie has been very kind to share her ShortKeys file with me, and I have been trying to decide how to integrate ShortKeys. I know there are others who use ShortKeys as well. How do you utilize ShortKeys versus templates for documentation?

This isn't much, but with Shortkeys, you can use a key combination to say:

Patient put in room by MA1 at 10:32 am. The other MA has a slightly different combination likely using his or her first initial. It's nice to know when the patient was put in a room for many reasons. But, I have few other tips beyond that. Some people just like using keys. It's always been the argument of some like using the mouse, others the keyboard.

I PM'd Donna but I have AC templates for most common problems and normal exams. I can then delete lines that do not apply and replace applicable text using shortkeys. For example, I have templates called "Complete Female" which is basically a generically normal exam. If they have DJD, I delete "Normal Joints" and then shortkey in "djdc" which translates into something like "Degenerative joint disease changes are noted in the hands." For an older patient, in the plan I will shorkey in "deol" which means "End of life plans were discussed with the patient. Living wills, Health Advocacy and Powers of Attorney were discussed, while for younger ones I may use "dbcp" (discussed birth control pills, their risks and side-effects and stressed to the patient they should not smoke while using them) or "dstd" (discussed sexually transmitted diseases) etc. This way I have a template within a template as it pertains to a particular patient. Works great for me.

To be honest, I can?t understand why everyone doesn?t use Shortkeys. Its cost is negligible, and it saves so much time and so many keystrokes. I am sure that there are many ways to use it; I would like to hear ideas from others.

Looking at my list, here is how they break down:

1. Regular abbreviations. More of a deal for a specialist since others read our notes, but for anyone- why have abbreviations in your notes? From now on, you type fu, r/o, wu, tx, or rx, but instead you see follow-up, rule-out, work-up, treatment, and prescription. These take no extra thought whatsoever; they are abbreviations you already know.

2. Created abbreviations. Why type the same words over and over? Make up your own abbreviations for commonly used words. You do have to remember them, but they are sort of common sense. Type tft, col, mus, mal, or djd and get thyroid function tests, colonoscopy, musculoskeletal, malignancy, and arthritis. This works great for drugs like pan, meto, and metro (pantoprazole, metoprolol, and metronidazole) as well as many more.

3. Names. People, pharmacies, hospitals. First and last initials usually work fine (mmj, ps, and univ become Michelle Martin-Jones, M.D.,Paul Sabundayo, M.D., and University of Maryland).

4. Longer sentences or phrases. Here is where you have to decide if you prefer a template or a Shortkey. It uses fewer keystrokes and hand movements (back and forth to the mouse) to use many shortkeys. For that reason, I like to have at least one for each section of the note. So shneg is ?The patient does not smoke, drink, or use illicit drugs?, and fh is ?Negative for colon cancer, and other GI illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease, or liver disease or malignancy?. It is quicker to do this than to right click, find the template, and move it to the note. Pick your other commonly used sentences and note elements (nlmPE prints out a full normal male physical; various ROS sentences; risk= ?The risks and benefits of the procedure were discussed and it will be scheduled?. Whatever you use a lot.

The process for this is much like the ones for templates; anything you notice that you type repeatedly, think of creating a Shortkey.

Don't forget uses of Shortkeys outside of the EMR. For example, ever get tired of typing your email address? Make a two or three letter Shortkey for your email, for your home address, phone number, etc.

Thanks Jon. That was a great tutorial. I haven't used Shortkeys in a while, but your last paragraph was extremely ironic. My email address is fairly long, and as I was typing it tonight, I thought sure would be cool if I could type it in with a mouse click or two. So, there you go. Guess I have to set it up again. Will it work in a field on a website?

Excellent, Jon. When I was using SoapWare, they actually had a shortkeys-like program built in. I really missed that when I went to AC so I researched and found Shortkeys on line. It is very well-worth the cost. I would now be lost without it.

Depends on the website and level of security. Generally it does.

Thanks to all for this great advice!

Phrase express is another great utility.
Ajay Ajmani

Leslie,
Why did you leave SoapWare?
I would imagine it was labor intensive to change programs.

Donna,

SW upgraded their program but failed to notify users that it was not really compatible with Windows NT server, which I was using at the time. The program became very buggy and when I talked back and forth with tech support at SW and they were just not very nice nor very concerned that all the backups I had done since updating were nothing but garbage. I could not restore my data (luckily at that time I was still printing all encounters). They told me my server was a "dinosaur" and I told them it was working just fine until their program upgrade screwed with it. All my other programs including my PM were working just fine. Well, as you probably can surmise, I have little patience so I went on line and found AC and told SW to GTH.

Wow, talk about bad tech support! That sounds like a nightmare.

With the competition these days especially in the tech sector, a lot of products are very similar. Tech support is one area that can make a huge difference in how your company does. And, it doesn't really cost that much more to teach your support techs how to be courteous and efficient.

Just as a nasty, hateful, "my life sucks more than yours" receptionist can ruin a medical practice.

I never interviewed to be your receptionist.

You are smarter than I so I would never hire you

When I used Logician it had a nice feature where I could be working on my note and use a hotkeys like feature. Just as above, you could type .ref or .anything and it was say Referral made to specialist. and Anything. I will have to check out short keys

thanks for the tutorial.
I will check out shortkeys. I would love to use it for my ridic long domain name which is twincityfamilymedicine (dot) com. This is probably the longest one on earth. Bert thought his was long, riverviewpediatrics (dot) org, haha.

Can anyone share their short keys files with us? I just made a few:

Several doctor's names by their initials. my special character is "."
25: I spent more than 25 minutes in direct face-to-face contact with the patient, more than half of which was spent in counseling and discussion
15: I spent more than 15 minutes in direct face-to-face contact with the patient, more than half of which was spent in counseling and discussion.
pt: this patient
It's going to be fun to make a lot more.