Clindoc is “paperless.”

Ta da!

So, in other words, you’re screwed too.

All I can say is … “woe unto the inhabitants of the earth!” With this piece of junk software you might as well pack your bags, bring a tent and sing Kum Ba Ya around the bonfire because you’ll be practically spending 50% of your time charting. It takes approximately 20 min to fill up and admission assessment and about 15 min to do shift assessment, of course factoring in interruptions that you’ll have to respond to while you do your documentation. 6 to 9 patients will definitely eat up your time, not to mention the slow response of the system, the multiple clicks and double entries you’ll have to make, plus canceling redundantly scheduled assessments.

I used to work in telemetry with 5 to 8 patients, and it was tough. Now I’m in ICU, with 2 to 3 patients the most, definitely better than 6 to 9 patients. The first few months will be tough… you’ll have a lot of reason to go overtime tho… take advantage of this (LOL), then once you’re used to the system, you can make use of the “comments” section so you don’t have to go through a convoluted array of check boxes and drop down menus. Eventually the excitement will die off, and you’ll hate going to work! This piece of software is a drag to use. It doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t conform to the way we work, although I can say I’ve made a tremendous amount of suggestions which they have incorporated that made it a little better, but overall they need to redesign the system from scratch. I do want to meet the marketing genius behind this because they practically sold snow to snowmen. Overall management wouldn’t care because they are all afraid. I hope your director has balls and would defend your unit from stupid decisions made by corporate. Good luck!

Our Clindoc is “adminstered” by a light-duty, obese, elderly, copd nurse with no computer background or training…just fly-by-night that fell into the position when this joint opened up. She’s never had to do patient care AND clindoc. She just adds junk as she feels fit to add with no logic or reasoning.

Kind of like our “education department” that doesn’t educate patients…only makes pretty signs saying, “how to wash your hands,” and holds mandatory Jchoa.jcoah,..whatever, updates that you have to attend for 20 minutes on your day off.

The biggest fiasco occured years ago when the clindoc witch made the self-determination that all of your assessments should be recreated from scratch, completely negating the advantages of repetitive charting and data storage on a computer. Before that, you’d compare previous and present, click that you agree and move on. Pretty quick.

Now, you must laboriously re-enter ventilator settings, ett site measurements, etc., time and time again, both shifts, and after you enter it, it’s wiped out for the next user. She DOESN’T get it. We complained and she maintained the little check box for a ventilator and after you open the charting region, NOTHING is carried over…just the check box.

The “clean” interface is a joke. Information is always hidden behind a check box that you must check to make the material pop-up. Error messages don’t address the actual error, just a series of three advisory boxes. Then you must peruse the page to find it yourself, with hit and miss attempts to eliminate the errors.

The “tab” key won’t let you jump from box to box without moving from keyboard to mouse, keyboard to mouse. This is a standard programming feature in most any program Does yours work? Do you have the ability to suggest stuff and have it implemented? It’s like talking to a wall out here.

I wrote an 8 – pager on the problems and possible solutions to Clindoc and it’s tragedies. Our CEO met with me and proclaimed that he doesn’t like clindoc either, neither does our QA (that’s a laugh) department, but declared that “it’s here to stay.” So I gave up. But I do give personal inservices to the chosen few who ask. I can Clindoc on an icu patient in about 5 minutes. I put EVERYTHING in comments and ignore the check boxes. Since our QA exists only of clearing the “sirens,” (Hate that term) nobody reads your charting. Out of sight, out of mind, put whatever the hell you want to put in there. And I believe there is an excellent chance that no one has the brains to retrieve it.

The vital signs modules aren’t conducive to ICU and don’t download. Our monitors are linkable, but they don’t use it. We hand enter vs on a written flowsheet. Neuro is done in writing and on clindoc, and it’s redundant. She’s got little goofey comments on the assessments like a checkbox for apnea that doesn’t address anything else. There’s no paralleism. Charting is in one style on one page and changes on another. You can display the charting times and sort by “dueness,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, creating her own words.

The computer lags everytime at “integumentary.” That’s when you reach for your coffee, so it’s a nice break. The “role-around” computers have 15 inch screens. We’re all in our 40’s with presbyopia. SHE doesn’t have to use em’…

My biggest beef is that we’re getting 3 patient assignments (I had 4 vents last week) and by the end of the day when you’ve got time to complain, you’re just sick of it all and you say screw it and go home.

The money is fair, over $40 an hour for most of us, and with a union looming, we may have some more stroke. I don’t personally like unions, but I’m ready to screw em’ back.

Hit me at my email address and we can share our grief. I’m an “old” cobol, basic, visual basic programmer and an ex-aerospace mechanical engineer turned stupid nurse.

And, yeah, we’re hooked up with King of Prussia, if you know what I mean.

It’s 0030 Monday morning.

Amen, and AMEN and AMEN! I totally hear you! We’re probably from the same sister company… the only company that uses Clindoc. Like you said (and I concur), it is the most ridiculous system I’ve ever seen. I’m a nurse and I program too, maybe they should have hired me! Unfortunately, the programmers do not know how to document, they aren’t clinicians and they don’t think like a nurse thinks. Just like you, I’d like to know who the salesman was, maybe we can learn from him on how to sell snow to snowmen! Again, AMEN… it’s glad to know that at least there’s someone out there that has a brain. You know what they say… “great minds think alike!”

It’s a pain in the ass. It’s expensive, slow, redundant, and NOT user friendly. It makes nurses chart in an alien world completely contrary to their training and expertise. It makes hospitals spend money on training nurses how to chart. It makes an IT department waste time on teaching when it should keep computers up and running to supply valuable lab and test results in a jiffy, 24/7.

Clindoc may have been designed by nurses, but they obviously didn’t have any programming skills. The programmers obviously didn’t have any charting skills. Common sense doesn’t apply. Non-sequiter questions and boxes are splayed throught clindoc. Clindoc makes my charting into subjective statements when I don’t want subjective statements. (Dressing “appears” instead of dressing IS, for example.) Usefull dates and times aren’t carried over but have to be laboriously re-entered by each and every nurse. Screen refresh times are outrageous which means processor time is inadequately administered. We have lockups and lost information and charting.

Registry staff doesn’t have to use it and they get paid more. And they have more time for patients and doctors and families because their not camped out in front of a computer, clicking and closing, clicking and opening, and hunting for information that should be right there in front of you, not presented “in a clean desk-top style, user-friendly interface.” What a crock.

Clindoc is fine if you have one patient. But add a family and a doctor to tend to and you’re wasting your time.

But if that’s what the hospital wants, I’ll spend the money. We actually had “superusers” flown in from Texas to teach the nurses clindoc in Las Vegas. When JACHO came by, they shut down clindoc and passed certification just fine.

I’d LOVE to find out who the salesman was. If you go to the Clindoc Opus website, it’s a nice clean job of advertising but NOTHING on support. You’ve got to CALL for help.

I placed a call on a Saturday morning. They called back Sunday afternoon. The greatest day at work is when CLINDOC IS DOWN and we paper chart. We have it as easy as registry…but we don’t make the money they make.

Please rearrange fields so that it follows a LOGICAL pattern. For example, SBP/DBP and (MAP) instead of having MAP all the way in the bottom of the page. This enhances data entry as data is entered in a LOGICAL way instead of having to mouse click and jump from one point to another and back. IT JUST MAKES SENSE don’t you think?

Take out the “pain” assessment from the ortho assessment as the pain assessment is done every 4 hours. This is unecessary redundancy and can cause inconsitency in data