Instinct is packed with visual tools that can help your team rock your shift! 🤘 Here is a collection of our best communication tools in Instinct and how to apply them.
Triage Tags
Triage Tags add a color coded bar to your patient’s Status Board and can be used to document how critical a patient is, nursing assignments, or specific client/patient concerns (you can even click a triage tag twice to fast-track it, making it a higher priority than the original color!). The Status Board can also be sorted by these tags by selecting the “Sort by Triage Tag” button at the top of the In/Out column.
💡 ProTip: Click here to learn more about how to make the best use of color Triage tags in your workflow!
Care Team
Our Care Team feature offers a way to list other staff members currently involved in each patient’s care (such as nurses, residents, students, interns, etc), so that at any point other staff members know who to get a status report from. This is located in any treatment sheets towards the left of the screen under the ‘Visit’ section:
💡 ProTip: Click here to learn more about adding members of the Care Team for clear communication on who is working on with each patient.
Assign To Me
The Assign To Me button displays a blue flag next to the patient’s name on the Status Board, indicating to other staff members that you’re currently working on that patient’s treatment sheet (ordering or completing treatments). This is an important tool to use for communication so that no one else comes along and duplicates treatments thinking they are not being addressed. As a reminder, being ‘assigned’ to a patient does not stop other users from viewing, ordering, and completing treatments as this is strictly a communication tool.
You can also assign yourself while in any treatment sheet:
📓 Please Note: Only you can assign yourself but anyone can unassign you (incase you forget to unassign yourself after your shift ends and you leave the hospital).
Alerts
Alerts help the team communicate safety-related patient warnings in real time and are displayed on the Status Board for everyone to see. Your hospital admins can create any new alerts or edit existing ones.
💡 ProTip: Click here to learn more about the two different types of alerts, Patient Alerts and Visit Alerts and how to best manage them!
Filters & Sorting
Filters allow you to sort your Status Board by wards, treatment status, service, and workflow. Applying multiple filters will further refine your patient list.
Sorting boards by patient name, triage tag, or check-in time customizes your boards based on workflow preferences.
💡 ProTip: Check out this handy Careville article on how to use Filters & Sorting to quickly organize your patients!
Progress Notes, Round Notes, and Vitals
Located at the top of each treatment sheet, Progress Notes are where nurses or doctors often write notes about the patient for a given hour. You can even create your own ‘Doctor Notes’ Product (for example) to coincide with shift changes on the treatment sheet as shown below:
Inside the Vitals Screen hosts a variety of information in regard to how your patient has been progressing during their hospitalization.
💡 ProTip: Click here for an awesome Careville article on how to use the Vital Screen, as well as the Progress and Rounds Notes to help with a smoother work flow during your shift!
COVID
Unique customizations within Instinct allow you to tailor your Status Board to help with patient tracking and COVID cleaning checklists. You can also create a “COVID-19 Cleaning Checklist” product group in Instinct and schedule regular cleaning protocols on a treatment sheet.
We also suggest creating wards for the various areas where patients can be during triage, including your parking lot.
💡 ProTip: Click here to learn more using Instinct during a pandemic!