The Pennington First Aid Squad in curly text

RULES

Once State certified, charts must be completed and locked within 24 hours of the end of the call. Trauma center charts and cardiac arrest charts where the PFAS AED is applied are to be written on the same day and completed and locked within 24 hours, preferably within 3 hours. All records shall be maintained in accordance with N.J.A.C. 8:40-3.9 and patient information shall remain confidential in accordance with N.J.A.C. 8:40-3.5

The first version of the chart completed and locked must be signed by two crew members if there was patient contact. Charts with NO PATIENT CONTACT, amendments, and flag corrections require only one signature.

Spell checker must be used. Charts will be demoted for words misspelled in boxes where the spell checker is active.

The only abbreviations allowed in narratives will be those used in emsCharts and the EMS Field Guide Basic and Intermediate Version, Sixth Edition, 2007. A copy of the guide will be left in the radio room.

Do not select "defaults" for assessments unless all were done. Enter only what you did. If it is not written it was not done (which may be okay).

DO ENTER

DO NOT ENTER

OPTIONAL

Conventions to help keep statistics

"REF TYPE"

Location

     Enter locations based on the mailing address. The data imported from the CAD often defaults to Hopewell Township. This MUST be changed, as Hopewell Township is not a valid mailing address and has no ZIP code. The majority of addresses PFAS serves will fall under the Pennington ZIP Code, 08534.

Crew members

Crew members

Choose as many as apply to each crew membr.

History, Medications, Allergies

Medical history

The State wants only coded entries made. This means proper names of medical conditions. For example Myocardial Infarction instead of heart attack, Hypertension instead of HTN. If you go through the pick list make sure the entry you make the words coded entry appears in green. This applies for patients already in the system. You may have to go back and change the previous history. to the correct CODED history. in order for the chart to advance.

If it is a new patient, a new box comes up, a list of body systems comes up. Next to each of the body systems, there is a plus (+) mark. If you hit the + mark, the categories get more specific in nature. Select the specific ailment and it shows up in the box to the right.

Medications

The medication names are now entered as coded entries. Please make sure you get the proper spellings of the medications and after they are entered individually you should see the green coded entry pop up. You can still write in the freeform section if a medication is not listed in the pick list.

Allergies

The allergies now also must be coded entries. Make sure the spelling of the allergies are correct and make sure the coded entry in green writing comes up.

Capitalization

Please capitalize proper nouns. Kirk Schmitt and Kirk schmitt are different names and 123 bull run rd is not the same as 123 Bull Run Rd as far as emsCharts is concerned.

Incident numbers

Do not use leading zeros unless they are part of the Mercer County Central import format. 00578 and 578 are different incident numbers as far as emsCharts is concerned. Incident numbers should be formatted either like "578" or exactly as formatted by Mercer County Central, for example, "2010-0000578." If you are entering numbers manually, don't try to fake the Mercer County Central format.