Home Forums Discussions Problems Spell Check

I am a very poor typist and type with two fingers and make a lot of errors. I rely on the spell checker for help. The spellchecker in AC has several nuances.

1) Words added to one terminal do not get added to the other. Seems it learns information for each computer rather than for each user. For ex. I put computers in exam room this week. Each computer now needs to learn every word again.

2) It does not recognize medication names even when they are picked from the in-built medication database. It keeps on alerting on each medication in the note every time!

3) It never learns several words and phrases no matter how many times you add to it. For ex. if my Secretary documents the allergies, her initials show up in the note as DSXXX and it alerts every time I save a note. I have added this like 100 times. Same is true for several items on my exam templates.

4) When you print a patient summary to hand out, it includes the plan of the encounter in it and spell checks it. Now when you save the encounter, the items corrected in the plan at the first instance are lost and you have to redo the spell check on the entire document including the Plan. Essentially the corrections made to the Plan on the first go do not save.

5) Fails to recognize even the basic medical lingo and diagnosis for ex., dyspnea, cholecystitis etc. Looks like the spell checker is not for medical use!

I think this could certainly use some improvement.

Anil,

This has been brought up at least 100 times. You are just going to have to resign yourself to the fact that our spellchecker is terrible.

Oops sorry..Let us keep our hopes for the future..

Anil,

This has been brought up at least 100 times. You are just going to have to resign yourself to the fact that our spellchecker is terrible.

But....if you go into any patient's chart on the Most Recent Encounter (the main page after pulling chart), click on F7 key or Edit --> Spelling and the infamous Wintergreen spell check window will pop up. There are many things you can do there. May not be able to fix your problem, but who knows.

Anil,

If you are still frustrated, really frustrated, with this and willing to do some work, then this is what I did.

http://www.autohotkey.com
Download the autohotkey program and read about how to use it, that's part of the work.

http://www.autohotkey.com/download/AutoCorrect.ahk
Copy this to a Notepad textfile on your computer. It isn't a medical terminology list, but it will fix a lot of misspellings. You will have to add the medical terminology you use to the text file and update it on every computer, that's the rest of the work.

This will allow you to type btw and automatically produce by the way so you can add boilerplate very easily. You could add words like dysp to be dyspnea, choly to cholecystectomy, chols to be cholecystitis, to your hearts desire.

But beware, after a while you will lose your ability to spell all that jargon you learned in medical school.

Now that we are on the topic again. I don't know if this is just me or part of the general spell checker woes, but whenever I go into Spelling Options F7 and I check the option to "Ignore Mixed case words" it doesn't retain it. I continue to have to keep hitting "ignore" when I'm closing a note.
Is there a way anyone knows of to use any different spell checker even if I have to pay for it separately?

Thanks
Khaled

Khaled (and Anil):
You have identified one of the significant bugs with the spell checker, namely the inability for it to retain the ability to ignore mixed case words. This minor issue is enough to render the spell checker almost useless because of the high number of words that fit this description.
The use of "Tall man" font which is mandated for medications means that many medications (e.g. predNISONE) will ALWAYS be incorrectly recognized as a misspelling. By the time you have "spell checked" the medication list, you have already had to make a number of unnecessary clicks...and you must do it every time you re-do the note.
Anil, I think this explains your numbers 2 and 3 above, as it is likely happening with other names (e.g. McMahon) or if your secretary has a mixed case user name (showing up in the allergy section).

This is a relatively minor issue, but the total cost in time wasted to all AC users is significant (either you waste time re-"ignoring" words over and over, or use don't use spell check and lose the utility altogether). How hard is this to fix? I have no idea (though a switch to an entirely different spell-check product couldn't be that hard). I feel that it is disrespectful of AC users that the company has ignored the complaints about this bug (and others like it) for so long. We know that they have been aware of it for years but we have no evidence that a fix is even on their radar.

Thanks to all. At least now I know it is the mixed case words for the most parts. But as Jon pointed out we can't avoid it. I think I have to just start canceling spell check to survive. Each computer has to learn too!

AC, please.. fix this or respond to us.

It is basically a very poor program. Wintergreen. When you think of medical spellchecking, does anyone think of any other spellchecker than Stedman's.

I am 99% certain (actually more) that you cannot purchase a third party spellchecker. When you install Stedman's, you must choose the software it will work on, and it has to be compatible with that program, namely Outlook and Word.

The problem which is worse is Tallman. I hate that program.

Bert it seems you have the weight of post behind you. Can you squeeze AC to get some definitive answer on this.

Also, I note that you are red. Is there some way to control fonts in AC, like bolding or changing color of abnormal labs or exam findings? Otherwise I am afraid I might keep on copying the same exam and forget to take off the "edema 3+" from my note.

Thanks for your confidence. While I likely touch base with AC more than some, my requests carry no more weight than anyone else's.

As to the red, that simply signifies that I am an admin on the board. You can use any color on the board; I do not believe you can use different fonts in AC.

Again, another long standing problem with AC.

The issue is that color or Bold, italic or such require Rich Text Font, which was never coded into AC. Apparently it would take a fair amount of coding to change this. It has been on the list of problems for a long time.

I simply don't use spell check. Just go with the typos and misspellings of guaic. I have learned to live with my staff's spelling of vomitting and alot. Even worse when they say, Patient presents with alot of vomitting.

But, at least it prepares me for the answering service who has never heard of Google, a dictionary or to ask a person how to spell his or her name.

Gotta like the "his or her." And, yes, gotta is not a word.

Whachu mean gotta ain't a word. I use it alot

Forgot about Chicago. Sorry.