Patient Notepad

Use the notepad to type free-form notes. You can categorize your notes on several tabs to view only the categories of notes you need to see.

How to Get Here

Open Patient Notepad - You can open this feature in multiple ways: Use the method that's most convenient for you. When the notepad is empty, the icon is red; when the notepad has existing text, the icon is blue.

Use This Feature

View Notes - Click a tab at the bottom of the notepad window to choose which page to work with. If a tab contains text, a plus sign (+) appears beside the tab caption. (See "Set Up Notepad Tab Captions" for details about naming the pages.)

Add & Edit Notes - Type your note in the notepad text box. You can use the notepad toolbar, right-click menu, and standard word processing keyboard shortcuts to complete your note, emphasize text, and add the current date and user initials. In addition to regular text, you can type or paste a URL (Internet hyperlink) into the field. Then, simply double-click the link to open that web page. (An active Internet connection is required for this feature to work.)

Your toolbar icons may appear slightly different, depending on which notepad you are working with.

Date Stamp - Click Date Stamp on the notepad toolbar (or press F2 on your keyboard) to insert the current date and user's initials at the cursor location.

Cut, Copy, Paste Text - You can use the icons on the notepad toolbar to $image\button_cut.gif$ Cut, $image\button_copy.gif$ Copy, and $image\button_paste.gif$ Paste notepad text You can also right-click to access a basic text editing menu, or use standard cut, copy, and paste You can cut, copy and paste to add and edit text and/or images to many areas of your system using standard keyboard shortcuts ( Ctrl+X , Ctrl+C , Ctrl+V , respectively). Or, you can often right-click the field or image you are working with and select the action from a menu. In many cases, Ctrl+A selects all available text or images, ready for you to cut or copy, Ctrl+Z performs an Undo of the last action, and Ctrl+Y performs a redo of the last action. keyboard shortcuts.

Enhance Text - Use the notepad toolbar, right-click menu, or standard word processing keyboard shortcuts to edit the $image\button_bold.gif$ Bold, $image\button_italics.gif$ Italics, $image\button_underline.gif$ Underline, Color, and Font properties of your text. If you change the text font, be sure you select a font that is available to everyone in your network, or the text may not display correctly on some workstations.

Undo / Redo Last Action - Use the $image\button_undo.gif$ Undo / redo Redo icons on the notepad toolbar (Or press Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y respectively) to erase the most recently completed editing action, or reverse the most recent Undo action.

Reload - Use the Reload icon on the notepad toolbar to discard any changes you have made since entering the notepad. You must confirm your action before continuing: Once you reload the original text, the action cannot be undone.

Resize the Window - Hover your cursor at a corner of the window, then click and drag to the desired size. ViewPoint remembers you preferred size, even after you exit and re-enter.

Print - Click Print from the notepad toolbar (or press Ctrl+P on your keyboard) to send the contents of the currently active notepad tab to any printer available to your workstation.

Save and Exit - When you close the notepad window with either the Exit icon on the notepad toolbar, or the $image\button_undo.gif$ in the upper-right corner of the window, all your changes are saved immediately.

Overwrite Prevention - Because multiple users can access an individual record simultaneously, ViewPoint verifies that no one else has changed the notepad text you've been working on before you are allowed to save it. If the notepad has been edited by another user, you are given the option of reviewing and accepting the updated notes (overwriting your own changes), or rejecting the changes, and saving your own changes. If the conflict cannot be resolved, the original and changed text are both stored in a text file (NOTES.TXT) that you can find in your ViewPoint system directory.

Patient History Notes - You enter notes onto this tab of a patient's notepad differently than any other notepad tab. Click the Pat. Hist. Notes tab of a patient's notepad, then right-click to insert or delete a note from this page. The notes that appear on the Pat. Hist. Notes tab appear on the Complete Patient History form, and optionally the patient's Treatment Chart. You can add and review unique notes about a patient from the Treatment Chart, the Notepad, and the Complete Patient History form.

More Information

Notepad Captions - Use the Tab Caption editor to name the tabs of your ViewPoint notepads so that you can categorize the types of notes you take. All patient, dentist, referrer, professional and insurance notepads share the same captions. See "Set Up Notepad Tab Captions" for details.

Changes are Permanent - As soon as you exit the notepad, all changes are permanently saved: You cannot reload old notes that you have modified or removed.

Converted Notes - If you converted to ViewPoint from another orthodontic practice management system, certain information from your original patient records such as additional comments and history comments may have been converted to your patient notepads automatically.

Notepad Subgroups - Use the Notepad Subgroups feature to add a message to a subgroup of patient notepads simultaneously.See "Notepad Subgroups" for details.