Notes

Overview

Setup is found in the grey left-hand side bar. Hover over the sidebar with the cursor and the bar will expand. Select Setup to expand a drop-down list of setup pages within PTS. To choose a setup page, select its name from the list.

Notes possibly represent the biggest single upgrade in PTS 5. Many formerly disparate system facilities are now found here and are now heavily customisable.

Fundamentally notes are used to quickly add additional data to a prescription. Notes are preconfigured by a system administrator, and are either selected on the prescription details screen or printed out and scanned with a barcode scanner.

By far the most common use of a note is to suspend a prescription for a set amount of time, and provide a reason why. Another extremely common example is a note that is recorded upon delivery of a prescription, that takes the signature and surname of the recipient and will not allow delivery to proceed without it. One final example is a note that sends itself as an SMS message to an outpatient when their prescription reaches the "waiting for collection" status.

As you can see notes not only store data but are also a means to provide customised additional control to meet your precise pharmacy requirements. They can be used to record errors, cancel a prescription, text a patient or ward, suspend a prescription and more. Notes can be recorded manually or automatically when the prescription meets specified criteria. They can be configured to prompt for additional data such as a signature, a date/time, or a hand typed string and so on, and you can configure how they look with customisable icons and colours, and even which types of user can see or record them.

Adding new notes

To create a new note access the actions menu by clicking on the actions menu icon at the top right of the page, then from the actions menu click the New Note button.

The process then continues in the note popup.

Editing existing notes

To edit an existing note, select the note you wish to amend by clicking on its entry in the list to load the note popup (note clicking the tickbox has another dedicated function).

Note Popup

Note details tab

The note details tab.

• Icon
  You can add a distinctive icon and colour for that icon to the note. These icons will appear on the home page, custom barcode sheets, in prescription details and on tickets given to outpatients.
• Abbreviated Text
  This is a free-format field and is displayed as the name of the note underneath its barcode, and how it appears in any lists when the note is being selected on-screen.
• Text
  This is what is stored when this note is recorded. This can be a simple hard-coded string, or can be heavily customised using the note builder option. See the Note Builder section below for more.
• Note type
  What kind of note is being recorded. Notes are handled differently dependent upon their type:
  1. Cancellation
     Recording the note will cancel the prescription.
  2. Suspension
     This will add the specified suspend duration to the target time for the prescription.
  3. Normal
     A standard note that doesn't trigger an event when recorded.
  4. Error
     Error notes appear on the error reports when recorded.
  5. Error & Cancellation
     As above, but also cancels the prescription when recorded.
  6. Collection
     Marks the prescription as collected. This is useful for recording when a prescription is collected in a non-standard way, e.g. "Collected by relative".
  7. Delivery
     Marks the prescription as delivered. This is useful for recording when a prescription is delivered in a non-standard way, e.g. "Delivered to nurse at hatch". Collection and delivery notes bypass any checks and balances that will be in place for a normal delivery and are useful for overriding default behaviour in extraordinary circumstances.

Display options tab

• Min. status
  This designates the minimum, or earliest status of a prescription where this note can be added. e.g. you may not want a delivery note to work on prescriptions that are not yet waiting for collection.
• Display on label
  Defines whether the note will appear on any subsequent barcode labels.
• Display on ticket
  Defines whether the note will appear on any subsequent outpatient tickets.
• Flag patient
  Whether the note will alert the patient via the outpatient or collection status displays.
  1. Never
     Will not flag the patient.
  2. With dispensary's 'Collection Status Flagged' message
     Flags the patient with the generic message specified in the dispensary setup screen.
  3. With the text of the note that was recorded
     Displays the content of the note. Be mindful not to show anything confidential.

Messaging options tab

The messaging options tab.

This facility relies on PTS being connected to an SMTP email server and an SMS service provider.

• Text Patient
  The note will be sent to the patient via SMS, assuming their phone number was provided with consent during the booking in process.
• E-Mail Patient
  The note will be sent to the patient via email, assuming their email address was provided with consent during the booking in process.
• Text Ward
  The note will be sent as an SMS to any associated ward staff who have the "receive text/email alerts" option enabled and have a phone number added to their account.
• Email Ward
  The note will be sent as an email to any associated ward staff who have the "receive text/email alerts" option enabled and have an email address added to their account.
• Text Dispensary
  The note will be sent as an SMS to any associated dispensary staff who have the "receive text/email alerts" option enabled, have a phone number added to their account, and have the DISPENSARYSTAFF permission set to Yes.
• Email Dispensary
  The note will be sent as an email to any associated dispensary staff who have the "receive text/email alerts" option enabled, have a phone number added to their account, and have the DISPENSARYSTAFF permission set to Yes.

Role permissions tab

Every role added to PTS will be listed here next to a dropdown where you can set the access that they have to this note.

• Hidden
  Users of this role will not see this note anywhere, even when viewing a prescription that contains it. This is useful for hiding potentially sensitive note types.
• View
  The note will be visible when recorded, but the user will not be able to record the note themselves.
• Create
  User will be able to see and record this note themselves, assuming the user has permission to create notes in general i.e. CREATENOTES = Yes. This setting will not override CREATENOTES = No.

Delete note

You cannot delete a note that has been recorded in the past and the option to delete will not be available. If the option is available, click on the delete note button and confirm that you want to proceed.

Print barcodes

Click on the Print Barcodes button and the available printers will be listed, along with the option to print a QR code for use exclusively with 2D barcode readers.

Click on the printer you want to use and the barcode label will be printed. If you chose Browser Printing then your web browser will handle the print job as opposed to PTS and a print preview will be displayed along with the option to choose an attached printer.

Note Builder

The most fundamental part of a note barcode is its "Text" setting. At its most basic level this is a pre-defined string of text that the note barcode represents, and scanning the barcode adds the text to the prescription for others to see. Users of our PTS 4 system will remember this used to be the extent of the notes system, however starting with PTS 5 notes have become significantly more powerful and flexible and this is achieved by adding "special characters" to the Text field that serve a specific purpose.

Special characters can be added anywhere in the Text field that when encountered by the system trigger special behaviour, namely either prompting for additional information from the user when recording the note, or replacing the special character with dynamic information calculated live by the system.

As there are dozens of special characters and commands, a Note Builder utility has been developed where you can simply make your choices from a drop down list. To access the note builder, open the Note details tab within the Note popup and click the Note Builder button to the right of the Text field.

Note Builder Popup

The note builder popup.

Text field

Contains the note text value that you are currently editing. You can still edit the field by hand at this point if you want to. You can also use this field to place the caret (keyboard cursor) wherever in the string you would like the special characters to be added when you make a selection below. The field is also useful to make manual changes and corrections as you go along.

Special characters that will prompt for extra information

This is a list of special characters and commands that prompt the user to enter additional information. Simply select the option you want from the list and the special character will be added to the Text field. The position of the character in the field is where the additional information will appear to other users once the note has been successfully recorded.

For example a note built as such:

Signed for by ^ at @. Signature: |

Would prompt for a free text field (^), a date and time (@) and a signature (|). Once recorded the note would look something like this when the prescription is later viewed:

Signed for by Mr. Bloggs at 01/12/2022 10:56. Signature:

For obvious reasons, it's not recommended to make extensive use of these characters if the note is primarily going to be recorded with a barcode scanner as they lack the facilities to allow the user to easily enter the additional information.

Special characters that will display information about the prescription:

This is a list of special characters and commands that will display the chosen prescription data. Simply select the option you want from the list and the special character will be added to the Text field. The position of the character in the field is where the additional information will appear to other users once the note has been successfully recorded.

For example a note built as such:

Dear ~, your Prescription (no. #) is ready for collection from the pharmacy.

Would reinterpret ~ as the patient's name and # as the ticket number, so the note becomes:

Dear Joe Bloggs, your Prescription (no. 1471) is ready for collection from the pharmacy.