A Preview of Changes Coming in 2014
2013 is soon coming to an end and although it may be a few months before all your patients are dispositioned, that doesn't mean that we can't look forward to 2014. Through everybody's feedback and usage of the database this year we have learned so much more about how the community keeps records and what improvements we should make. So, in the beginning of 2014 will be introducing some simple changes that are designed to streamline and simplify the usage of the database as well as add a few new fields that are common custom fields across many of the accounts. Listed below is a preview of changes that are coming and a brief description of each. As we get closer to the new year we will release a video tutorial showing how to take advantage of all these changes.
Preview of Changes Coming in 2014
Admit temp — Numerous accounts have added an admit temperature field as a custom field so were just going to make this a native field in WRMD. Those accounts that do have an admit temperature field will have their values moved to the new native field
Admit mm color — Another common value collected by rehabbers is the admit mucous membrane color. So we will be adding this in as a new native field as well.
Change gender to sex — A few users have pointed out that we can often identify our patients sex but we may not know their gender so we're going to change the label from gender to sex. We are also going to make this not a required field any longer. It will however default to unknown encouraging you to change it if it is known.
Updating the admit mentatation choices — Over the past year numerous people have asked what BAR, QAR and NAR mean. So we are going to replace these three acronyms with actual words. Such as alert, quiet, obtunded and so on. A few of the words may seem a bit "doctory" to you but most of the words have common meaning so it should be an easy transition fore most.
Removing chick — The admit age chick could be used to describe any age of a young bird and because there are already so many other more descriptive words for a young bird we're just going to pull it out. Downey would be a more appropriate word for a bird that only has downy feathers.
Renaming Master Problem to Nature of Injury — This is primarily to model more closely after the US Fish and Wildlife annual report.
Simplifying the quick links list — We are going to replace Full Search and Advanced Search with just Search. This will take you to the Full Search screen. If you need to do an Advanced Search you can go to the Full Search screen where there will be a link to Advanced Search. We are also going to remove the Duplicate Case link. If you want to duplicate a case just click the New Case link where you will see you a link to Duplicate Case.
Extension values filtered into the initial care — Just like when you add a prescription or lab value and that information appears in the medical record, extension values that you enter on the same day the animal was admitted will appear under the initial treatment field on the initial care screen.
Kinship — There will be a new field that will be used to indicate a kinship (sibling, parental or adopted) between individuals.
Batch Updating — This may be one of the most exciting updates coming up. At those times when you have a handful of records that need to have the same information updated on each of them you will soon be able to batch update those changes all at once.
batch updating
This is a just a short list of the most important changes coming. If you have any feedback or thought on these changes please let us know. You can email us at support@wildneighborsdp.org or send us feedback from within Wildlife Rehabilitation MD.