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Create an Embedded Injury and Treatment Workflow

Maddison Jones
  • Updated

Context

Smartabase is commonly used for injury and illness reporting workflows. These workflows may range from simple soreness and wellness measures entered by an athlete in their daily monitoring form to complete electronic medical record (EMR) systems involving multi-disciplinary teams, alerts and surveillance dashboards.

Traditionally, EMR workflows in Smartabase were built in one event form. The first section (or sections) within the event form focused on collecting information about the injury. Following this, a table was provided to enter details about the treatment of that injury, including standardized fields for treatment notes (e.g. SOAP or SOTAP notes: Subjective notes, Objective notes, Treatment, Assessment, Plan), where each table row indicated a separate treatment. This approach allowed for all treatments relating to an injury to be displayed in one place to track the injury history and run calculations on the table to determine metrics such as the duration of the injury and the latest injury status.

However, when a patient presents for a consultation with their practitioner, they may want to discuss multiple issues or they may have multiple injuries requiring treatment. Despite the advantages mentioned, the aforementioned workflow was limited in that to treat any secondary injuries or issues, the practitioner had to update separate injury records within the same consultation. This process can be time-consuming, and we understand that time is a precious commodity. Logging multiple injuries in the same injury record doesn’t facilitate clean injury surveillance analysis since records are combined, so we don’t necessarily recommend this option as an alternative.

We developed Embedded events to facilitate an alternative solution where injury details and treatment notes are stored in separate event forms. Embedded events allow you to link records from one event form to records from another event form to indicate that the records are associated with each other. This allows practitioners to create one set of treatment notes in a consultation which may contain details about multiple issues or injuries, and link those treatment notes to all relevant injuries. This saves time for the practitioner, while still providing an easy method for viewing all related treatments and providing a clean data storage solution for injury surveillance analysis.

If you are considering changing your current injury workflow, we highly recommend speaking to your Smartabase consultant first to discuss the benefits and risks in relation to your situation and ensure that no data is lost.

Goals

This tutorial will take you through the process of creating an injury workflow using Embedded events.

Outcomes

  1. Create an event form to store injury details.
  2. Create an event form to store consultation details.
  3. Link an injury to the Treatment Notes event form.
  4. Link a treatment to the Injury Record event form (optional).

Outcome 1: Create an event form to store injury details.

  1. In the builder interface, create an event form named Injury Record.
  2. Add relevant fields to collect injury data. At a minimum, add the following fields to your form:
    • A Date field named Date of First Symptoms since this may be different to the date that the injury was reported.
    • A Body Diagram field named Injured Area to indicate the OSIICS code relating to the area. In the advanced properties, enable searching and set the maximum number of items to 1. A screenshot of a body diagram field and its advanced properties
    • A Single select field named Injury Resolved with Yes and No as options. In the advanced properties, set the Default value to No and set the orientation of the options to Horizontal. A screenshot of a single select field with options for Yes and No and its field properties
    • A Date field named Resolution Date. Set the field to only be visible if the Injury Resolved field is set to Yes. In the advanced field properties, set the default date to None and set the preferred date format.
    • You may also like to add some calculations to use in surveillance dashboards and reporting. For more information, read our tutorial on creating injury calculations from body diagrams. In our form, we have added them to the Injury Calculations section, which is set up with three columns in the section advanced properties, and is conditionally hidden by using conflicting visibility settings. Since the Injury Resolved field can never equal No and Yes, the section will never be shown. A screenshot of conditional visibility on a section to hide it.

  3. Update any form properties and save properties, then save the form.

Outcome 2: Create an event form to store consultation details

  1. In the builder interface, create an event form named Treatment Notes.
  2. Add Paragraph text fields named Subjective, Objective, Treatment, Assessment and Plan (SOTAP) to record the treatment notes.
  3. Add a Text calculation field named Summary which summarizes the SOTAP notes using the following function:
    concatenate(
        if(isempty(Subjective), '',
        concatenate("Subjective Notes: ", Subjective,"\n")
        ),
    
    if(isempty(Objective), '', 
        concatenate("Objective Notes: ", Objective, "\n")
        ),
    
    if(isempty(Treatment), '',
        concatenate("Treatment: ", Treatment, "\n")
    ),
    
    if(isempty(Assessment), '',
    concatenate("Assessment: ", Assessment, "\n")
    ),
    
    if(isempty(Plan), '', 
        concatenate("Plan: ", Plan)
    )
)
  4. Add a Single select field named Status to indicate the patient’s status as at the date of that treatment. The options are Available, Modified and Unavailable.
  5. Update any form properties and save properties, then save the form. A screenshot of a treatment notes event form

Outcome 3: Link an injury to the Treatment Notes event form.

For this outcome, you will add an Embedded event field to the Treatment Notes form. This will allow practitioners to start a consultation with the treatment template and later create a new injury or link an existing injury if required.

  1. Open the Treatment Notes event form.
  2. Add an Embedded event field to the form and set it up as follows:
    • Name: Related Injury or Injuries
    • Event: Injury Record
    • Enable Show Date Filters.
    • Start Date (Months Ago): 1
    • End Date (Months Ago): 0
    • Choose which Fields you would like to show in the Embedded event. The fields you select should allow you to easily identify the linked treatment and include any fields that you intend to link into the form, but should be brief so as to keep the page looking clean. In our example, we have selected the Date of First Symptoms and Injury Diagnosis fields.
    • In the advanced properties for the Embedded event field, set the following parameters:
      • Show ‘date’ column set to Yes.
      • Show ‘about’ column set to No.
      • Show ‘by’ column set to Yes.
      • Default show in tables set to False.
      • Show in PDF reports set to True. A screenshot of a treatment notes event form containing an embedded event for related injuries
  3. Below the Embedded event field, add an Embedded event summary field named Injury Diagnosis. This field will populate with the injury diagnosis from the Injury Record form when a record is linked and can be used in reports and dashboards.
    • Set the advanced field properties, including setting the field to ignore blanks (True) and to not concatenate values (False)
    • In the Calculation settings, enter the name of the injury diagnosis field in the Injury Record event form, exactly as it is named there. In our example, we will enter Injury Diagnosis then select Update.

  4. Save the form.

    A screenshot of how to link a treatment note to an injury record using an embedded event field

Outcome 4: Link a treatment to the Injury Record event form (optional).

You may also like to provide practitioners with the option to create or link a treatment note from the Injury Record form. This might be a more suitable option if their preferred workflow is to begin by looking at a specific injury and then adding relevant treatment notes.

  1. Open the Injury Record event form.
  2. Add an Embedded event field above the Injury Resolved field and set it up as follows:
    • Name: Treatments
    • Event: Treatment Notes
    • Enable Show Date Filters.
    • Start Date (Months Ago): 1
    • End Date (Months Ago): 0
    • Choose which Fields you would like to show in the Embedded event. The fields you select should allow you to easily identify the linked treatment and include any fields that you intend to link into the form, but should be brief so as to keep the page looking clean. In our example, we have selected the Status and Summary fields.
    • In the advanced properties for the Embedded event field, set the following parameters:
      • Show ‘date’ column set to Yes.
      • Show ‘about’ column set to No.
      • Show ‘by’ column set to Yes.
      • Default show in tables set to False.
      • Show in PDF reports set to True.A screenshot of an embedded event for treatment notes in an injury record
  3. Below the Embedded event field, add an Embedded event summary field named Latest Status. We will use this field to include the latest injury status in the Injury Record form for use in reports and dashboards.
    • In the advanced field properties, set the field to ignore blanks (True) and to not concatenate values (False).
    • In the Calculation settings, enter the name of the status field in the Treatment Notes event form, exactly as it is named there. In our example, we will enter Status then select Update.
  4. Add another Embedded event summary field named Latest Treatment.
    • In the advanced properties, set the field to ignore blanks and do not concatenate values.
    • In the Calculation settings, enter Summary as the field to pull through the latest treatment notes from the Treatment Notes form, then select Update.An embedded event summary field in an injury record event form to pull through the Summary field from a related form

  5. Save the form.

In the example workflow video below, note that the Related injury or injuries and Injury Diagnosis fields in the Treatment Notes record are both empty. This is because the workflows set up in Outcomes 3 and 4 are separate and do not interact with each other. To avoid confusion when using the workflow, you may wish to add instructions to the form in the section properties, field properties or use a Text calculation. Alternatively, you may prefer to configure the workflow so that there is only one navigational pathway (i.e. treatment notes are created from injury records, or injury records are created from treatment notes).

A screen recording how how to add a treatment note from an injury record using embedded events

Test your workflow

  • Ensure that your role has permission to view the event forms in the main interface.
  • Enter a test record into the Treatment Notes event form, then create an injury record or link the treatment to an existing injury record using the New or Link buttons above the Embedded event field.
  • Confirm that the Injury Diagnosis summary field populates with the correct injury.
  • If you completed Outcome 4, enter a test record into the Injury Record event form, then create a Treatment Notes record using the New button above the Embedded event field.
  • Confirm that the latest status and treatment notes populate in the injury form.

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