Center to Advance Palliative Care

Although we chart electronically in our service, we have developed a paper form for each clinician to fill out and leave for the rest of the team when that member is to be off for one or more days in a row (including the weekend). Since none of the APN's on the service are full time, "flipping" patients is a common occurence, and short-hand methods to communicate are useful. The form includes the patient's name, room number, code status, the ability to circle either Sat or Sun (indicating which day/days the patient needs to be seen on the weekend), and brief sections to indicate diagnosis/main problems, medication changes, and focus of care/"to do". In this section on focus of care, the clinician can circle the abbreviation for each emphasis (e.g., "pain", "Sx" = symptom, "CP" = care planning, "CC" = comfort care, "PSC" = psychosocial care, code = need to address resusciatation status)

All of this may seem cumbersome or confusing in this format as reply to your post, but I am willing to try to scan and send to you, if that would be helpful. I am somewhat technilogically challenged, but am willing to give it a try!