To the Editor

When we installed our Perioperative EMR, we created a category of “allergies” called Special Alerts. This includes items we felt would otherwise be difficult to find in the record, but had significant impact on ongoing and future care episodes. In addition to Difficult Intubation, we included Pseudocholinesterase Deficiency, Malignant Hyperthermia, Difficult Crossmatch, and Refuses Transfusion.

We selected the “allergy” option because it is patient specific, as opposed to event (encounter) specific, and as such will flow forward into each subsequent care event. We did have some pushback from the IT folks implementing our house-wide EMR, because “nobody else does that.” So I’m happy to see someone else has done the same sort of thing.

I hadn’t thought about the wristbands, and I will probably take that to my nursing executives.

Christine A. Doyle, MD
President, Coast Anesthesia Medical Group
Vice-Speaker, California Society of Anesthesiologists
Delegate, American Society of Anesthesiologists
Chair, Electronic Media & Information Technology (EMIT) Committee, ASA
Director, Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (formerly ASCCA)