Universal Anaesthetic Chart

We're probably never going to get a true Universal Anaesthetic Chart because of differences in standards across countries, but we could have a National Chart in the same way as Wales has had the All Wales Drug Chart for several years.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477322/

In particular it has been suggested that "The movement of doctors between hospitals within the NHS is now substantial and hospital-based non-medical prescribers are also beginning to move around the UK. This only makes an even stronger case for moving from independently developed prescription charts to a common approach."  http://www.aomrc.org.uk/projects/standards-in-patient-prescription-charts.html

There is a group working on standardising the nomenclature of Anaesthetic Charts for electronic records and compatibility with HL7 (http://www.hl7.org.uk/) and so on.

In the meantime I've been developing something in conjunction with Dr Richard Griffiths of the AAGBI.

Towards a National Anaesthetic Chart 

If we accept that nationally there are standards of care in Anaesthesia (and we do) it makes sense to assume that case notes in Anaesthesia, of which the Anaesthetic Chart is a part, sometimes the only part, should contain the same information. 

Dr Griffiths has been working on creating a paper Anaesthetic Chart with a standard set of components that could be used nationally in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the All Wales Drug Chart.

I've built a small web application that allows users from different hospitals to build their own charts based on this.

Anaesthetic Chart Builder

Users are presented with a set of components they can view with a click of a button.

This is one of the mandatory components, the basic patient and doctor details.

Users can view all of the different components before they build the chart. Above is the optional Neuraxial Block component.

Once you've chosen which optional components to include you click "Build It"...

... and are taken to a page with all of the required components stacked in a list format.

You can drag and drop the components within the designated area. 

All of the components snap to each other and to the edges of the designated area for easy arrangement. 

Once you've constructed your chart you can print it out. This print out is intended as the template that each department can send to the official stationary supplier. 

If it's a national chart why should departments build and send a template themselves? Well the idea is that different departments have different needs and so may need different components. This is very much a work in progress and feedback is most welcome. Join the debate by emailing me (admin@subjective-effect.co.uk) or following me on twitter @Sub_Effect.