Clinical Item Keywords and Shortcuts

Clinical item keywords help you locate clinical item types or define shortcuts to clinical items.

For example, the words 'Glue', 'Otitis', 'Media' and 'OM' could all be keywords for the term 'Glue ear'. This enables the clinical term to be found easily without knowing the exact wording.

You can add the following shortcuts:
  • Shortcuts to commonly-used clinical items from patients' clinical records.
  • Shortcuts for manual recalls, either from
    • Patients' clinical records
    • Investigation results

To display the keywords used in Communicare, select File > Reference Tables > Clinical Item Keywords.

In the Keyword Maintenance window, keywords are listed in the top pane with special, shortcut keywords listed first. Select a keyword to list the clinical items that use that keyword in the lower pane. Keywords are colour-coded:
  • Black - ICPC-2 PLUS terms
  • Blue - other items distributed by Communicare
  • Purple - local terms

Special shortcut keywords

All keywords starting with the dollar ($) sign, except recall keywords) are added to the shortcut bar at the bottom of the clinical record as Clinical Item categories. You can define any number of clinical item shortcut categories, however, you should restrict the number of buttons to those that will fit into a single row of buttons on the smallest screen resolution used by any user. This should ideally be about 8-12 buttons.
Example clinical item shortcut categories in clinical record

In the Keyword Maintenance window, select a shortcut keyword and add any clinical item that you want included in that category on the shortcut bar in the clinical record. For example, to the $Referral keyword, add clinical items such as Referral;cardiologist, Referral; counsellor and so on. The number of clinical items included in a category is displayed in the Times Used column.

Alternatively, in File > Clinical Item Type > Keywords & Qualifiers tab, add the shortcut keyword to a clinical item. New clinical items added to a shortcut keyword will be added to the shortcut in the clinical record and listed in the Keyword Maintenance window.

Recall shortcut keywords

Use the keyword $Recall to add items to which it is attached to the Recall button of the clinical record. The item is treated as a manual recall.

You can also link manual recalls to investigation results. Use the $IxRecall keyword to add recall items to the Add Recall button of the Match and Review Result window.
Add Recall in Investigations

Working with keywords

To work with keywords for a Clinical Item Type:
  1. To display the Keyword Maintenance window, select File > Reference Tables > Clinical Item Keywords.
  2. In the Locate field, enter the keyword you want to work with.

Use the top grid to select the keyword that you want to work with. You can also add, delete or change keywords.

The bottom grid displays all clinical item types that use the keyword selected in the top grid. Use the bottom grid to add clinical item types to a keyword or remove them from a keyword. Linked Qualifiers item are disabled rather than deleted.