Ether Resources for Anesthesia Research and Education

Stanford PACU Rotation: EPIC Tutorial


EPIC Tutorial: Pain Management Specialty login and MOR Status Board on Epic
(or, how to make your life easier on the PACU rotation!)

In the PACU, you'll often find yourself making modifications to orders that have already been written as well as writing new orders yourself. With the latest version of Epic, you may have found this somewhat difficult to navigate in the Anesthesia Specialty context, especially after a record has been closed by the attending for that case.

A quick and easy way to write orders for PACU patients is to log in as "Pain Management Specialty" rather than "Anesthesia Specialty." This is the same context you use on the Acute Pain rotation. When you bring up a patient's chart, a different set of tabs will show up on the left of the screen. The most useful ones are:

Additionally, you can access the Master Daily Schedule by clicking on the MDS tab at the top of the screen, just as you would in the Anesthesia context.

The caveat to this strategy is that the MOR Status Board is not easily accessible from the Pain context. Here's how to add a link to the status board:

  1. Log in under the Pain Management Specialty context;
  2. Click on the Epic tab at the top left of the screen;
  3. Go down to "Reports" and hover over it or click on it;
  4. Click on or hover over "OR Reports" (2nd item down in the tab that comes up);
  5. Click on "Status Board" (6th item down in the tab that comes up);
  6. You should now see the status board, but to call it up more easily next time, go back up to the Epic tab. The first item under "Recent" at the top should be your Status Board. Click on the star icon just to the right of the text and it should turn yellow. You should now have "1-Status Board" as the first item you see under the Epic tab;

If you want to modify the status board to include only the MOR and ASC cases (no endoscopy, OSC, cath lab, etc, since we typically don't take care of those patients) and include the ones in the PACU:

  1. Call up your "Status Board" as above;
  2. Click on Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the Status Board page;
  3. Make sure "Anesthesia OR Cases Status Board" is highlighted on the left (click on it if it isn't);
  4. Look at the menu in the mid-left area called "Locations." Click on any location that isn't Main OR or ASC (the first 2 on the list) and press Backspace to delete it. When the text box comes up, click "Yes" to confirm deletion;
  5. Look at the menu in the middle called "Case Progress Statuses." Go down to the first empty spot and type in "PACU" and click the magnifying glass. Click on "PACU Phase 0" to add it. Then do the same for Phases I and II;
  6. Check the box at the top right for "My Default Report";
  7. Click "Save As" and name it. You will now have a report under your name at the top left that will open automatically when you click "Status Board" from the Pain context (remember, it's the first item under the Epic tab at the top left if you set it up as above)!

Future versions of Epic may incorporate a modified Status Board as a default tab in the Pain Management Specialty context. It has at least been suggested to the Epic Powers That Be!

Jen Basarab-Tung, CA-3
March 2013

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