Dictate the consultation into the record, between the examination and the advice to parents. Dictadoc transcribes on your computer. Turn on the options you need, and it writes weight, height and doses per kilogram in digits and types the text into the record field you have open.
Many short consultations, children of every age, and parents who leave with advice. Every appointment leaves a note, and some also need a letter.
The follow-up consultation
Weight, height, head circumference, development, feeding, immunisations. A short note full of figures, which has to be up to date before the next child comes in.
The consultation for an unwell child
Fever, earache, bronchiolitis or gastroenteritis: the examination, today's weight, the treatment worked out by weight and the signs that should bring the family back. The safety-netting advice given to parents goes into the record.
The referral letter
To CAMHS, ENT, speech and language therapy or a hospital team: the child's history, the examination and the question you are asking. Longer than a note, it is often written at the end of the day.
The letter for school or nursery
Requested at the end of the appointment, about a condition, a medicine or an activity. Only a few lines, but they have to be written in the middle of an already busy consultation.
Day to day
What delays your clinic notes
Weight, height and doses written in words
Today
Every consultation brings its figures: weight, height, head circumference, a dose worked out by weight. With an ordinary dictation tool, "twelve point four kilos" or "fifteen milligrams per kilogram" often come back in words, and you retype them.
With Dictadoc
Turn on "Numbers, units and dosages": "twelve point four kilos" is then written "12.4 kg" and "fifteen milligrams per kilogram" becomes "15 mg/kg". Dictadoc writes the dose you dictate: it neither calculates it nor checks it.
Numbers, units and dosages
The note finished after the family has gone
Today
During the examination, you hold the child, reassure the parents and answer their questions. Typing the note at the same time is hard, so it gets completed between consultations, from memory.
With Dictadoc
Set your dictation key and allow the text to be typed into other software. While the parents dress the child, put the cursor in the record, press the key and dictate the examination. The second press sends the dictation for transcription, then the text is written into that field. If the record was closed in the meantime, a message tells you and the text waits in Dictadoc.
Dictation key
Text typed into the field
A dictation interrupted by the child
Today
Mid-sentence, the child starts crying, climbs off the couch, or a parent asks a question. To stop the dictation you have to find the application behind the record, and when you come back the cursor is no longer in the right place.
With Dictadoc
Show the floating panel, which sits above the record. One click pauses the dictation, resumes it or sends it. The keyboard stays with your software, never with the panel: your cursor does not leave the field where the text is to be written.
Floating panel
Dictation example
A consultation for croup, dictated at the end of the examination
Child aged 18 months, seen in clinic with a barking cough.
What you say
Barking cough and hoarse voice since last night [comma] with a low-grade fever [full stop] eating and drinking well [full stop][new paragraph] weight eleven point two kilograms [full stop] alert and playful [full stop] no stridor at rest [comma] no recession [full stop] oxygen saturation ninety-eight percent in air [full stop] chest clear [full stop][new paragraph] mild croup [full stop][new line] dexamethasone zero point one five milligrams per kilogram given as a single oral dose [full stop][new line] safety-netting advice given to parents [colon] return if there is stridor at rest [comma] difficulty breathing or drowsiness [full stop]
What Dictadoc writes
Barking cough and hoarse voice since last night, with a low-grade fever. Eating and drinking well.
Weight 11.2 kg. Alert and playful. No stridor at rest, no recession. Oxygen saturation 98% in air. Chest clear.
Mild croup.
Dexamethasone 0.15 mg/kg given as a single oral dose.
Safety-netting advice given to parents: return if there is stridor at rest, difficulty breathing or drowsiness.
The words in brackets are commands. Dictadoc replaces them with punctuation and line breaks.
With the "Numbers, units and dosages" setting turned on.
The settings list every command for your language.
Privacy
What you dictate stays on your computer
Transcribed on your computer
Your computer transcribes your voice itself. Nothing you dictate is sent over the internet.
Erased on quit, if you want
Choose to keep nothing, and reports and recordings are erased when you quit Dictadoc.
Encrypted on your disk
The reports you keep stay in an encrypted database whose key is held by your system keychain.
For a group practice
Dictadoc Server transcribes for every workstation in the practice from one computer. Workstations need neither a graphics card nor internet access.
No. Dictadoc does not calculate a dose, compare it with the child's weight or flag an error: it is not a medical device. With "Numbers, units and dosages", it writes the dose you dictated as numbers, and you read every treatment through before giving it to the parents.
Which values stay in words?
Every number that is not followed by a unit: age in months, centiles, respiratory rate or temperature in degrees. Check them before you give the advice to the parents.
My software has a letter template. Can I fill it in by dictating?
Yes, once text insertion is turned on in the settings. Open the template, put the cursor where the text should go and dictate: once transcribed, the text is written there, as if typed on the keyboard. Dictadoc itself offers no templates or forms.
Can I dictate a long referral letter in several goes?
Yes. Each time you carry on, a take is added to the same report: pause, resume, listen to a passage again or correct it by hand. Pasted into Word or an email, the letter keeps its paragraphs and lists.
Do my notes about a teenager stay on this computer?
Yes. Transcription happens on the computer, and no dictation is sent over the internet. Reports stay on that computer in an encrypted database, or disappear each time you quit Dictadoc if you have set it up that way.
Install the app on Mac or Windows, buy a licence, then enter the key you receive by email in Dictadoc. The licence year starts on the day you activate it.
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