Re: [Gnumed-devel] EMR Journal plug-in improvement suggestion

[James Busser]

Maybe just to review how encounters "work" before further modeling  
the EMR journal display options.

Typical (single problem):
- patient comes for one purpose / problem. No other business occurs  
in the clinical record. The resulting soap rows are committed in the  
same "save" step, and so all rows share (exactly?) the same date-time  
stamp. The EMJ journal would display simply, and tidily.

Typical (multi-problem)
- patient comes for more than one purpose/problem. No other business  
than these *multiple* problems is dealt with in the encounter. In the  
backend, there will result multiple soap rows across all problems  
(episodes which may, or may not, have been attached to issues). On  
the one hand, these are all part of the same encounter, but on the  
other hand, the "parts" of the progress note are saved in separate  
steps. This (?) is one reason why, within a single encounter, there  
can be different date-time-stamps.

Issues:

- the button "Reset" seems destructive... it does not reset the text  
to its value immediately before the last cursor insertion and  
typeahead, it only clears *everything* in the editor, so can we call  
it Clear?

- right now, if inside the soap widget the user clicks "Save"
	- they are prompted for a descriptive name (defaults to the  
assessment text)
	- although they are positioned inside a dialog, they cannot change  
their mind
        ... what if they realize they want to fix or add something more?
	--> suggest a 2nd button "Wait" that allows to return to the  
encountlet widget
	- also, the "Save" button does not only mean "write to disk to  
protect this data" ...
        ... it also means "close this entry in the soap widget"
	--> if it remains useful to save individual threads in a Progress  
note, suggest this button be renamed "Done"

- however, is there a value to saving one portion of a note before  
saving another portion? Often in a visit, even when I thought I was  
done dealing with one issue, the patient again goes back to it before  
the visit is done. It might be better to lose the Save / Done button  
in favor of "Save & close visit" ... would there be a side-benefit  
that this gives all parts of the encounter the same time stamp,  
making the display less disrupted by other changes to the clinical  
record?