I just taught two of my residents an easy way to log cases without stickers, notebooks, cards (or any other HIPPA risky methods). They were all but jumping up and down with happiness, so I decided this might be worth sharing.

(For those that aren’t in medicine, this is a requirement for everyone training in a procedural based field in medicine.)

Step 1:At the end of the case, when you open the computer for the orders and notes, highlight and copy the patient info at the top of the screen.

Step 2:   Open your Outlook calendar. Every institution gives you an Outlook account for your email and (even if you haven’t found it yet) this has a calendar, too. Hospital and medical school Outlook accounts are password protected and HIPPA compliant. (It would be a good idea to double check at your institution, but I haven’t found one yet where this isn’t true).

Step 3: Create an “appointment” for your case.

Paste what you copied from Epic into the “note” portion of the appointment. It will look like the green box in the image below.

Copy the name and MRN to the subject line of the “appointment”

Add the attending’s name if it’s not in the info copied from Epic.

Step 4: To officially log your case, open the ACGME site in a window next to your open calendar. Copy and paste the information from your calendar to log the case (isn’t that better than typing all that info?!?!…. you’re welcome!)

Step 4b: Put an asterix by the patients name in your calendar entry to show that you logged this case.

Hope that helps!  If you discover any important tricks or shortcuts to add to this system, please contact me or comment below!