Before you start
The In-patient care area must be switched on in Settings → Facility, or the whole Inpatient group is absent from the sidebar — see Care areas. At least one ward, sub-ward and bed must exist; create them under Wards and beds.What you’re looking at
The page walks four states in order and you cannot skip one: choose a ward under Select a ward to view its sub-wards, then a sub-ward — until you do, the panel reads Select a ward first — after which the ward statistics and then the bed grid appear, one card per bed. A brand-new hospital sees No wards available with Please contact your administrator underneath. That is a settings job, not a ward job. Selecting a bed card opens the Bed {number} Details dialog, where the detail lives: Admitted, Diagnosis, Attending, Notes and Last Updated. An occupied bed with nobody named as attending reads Not assigned rather than guessing at one. The grid stays deliberately sparse so an empty bay is obvious from across the room.Find a bed, or the patient in it
Once you have opened a ward, a search box and filter buttons sit above the bed grid, on the same row as Back and the Wards › <ward> trail.- Search matches on bed number, patient name and attending clinician, in any order — so you can find a bed you know the number of, or a patient whose bed you do not.
- Bed status narrows to Occupied, Available, Reserved or Under maintenance.
- Patient status narrows to Critical, Under observation, Stable or Recovering. It is deliberately separate from bed status: “which beds are free” and “who is critical” are different questions.
- Clear filter empties one; Clear all appears once anything is narrowing the grid.
A grid that a search has emptied says so and tells you how many beds it is drawn from. It never reads as a ward with no beds.
Admit a patient
Admission starts from the consultation that decided the patient needs a bed, not from this page.1
Select Admit Patient on the consultation
Open the patient’s consultation and select Admit Patient. A bed picker opens and walks the same ward → sub-ward → bed order as this page. A sub-ward with nothing free is marked Full, and picking it says No free beds in this sub-ward rather than offering nothing — free a bed or choose another sub-ward. Pick a free bed.
2
Choose the Attending clinician
The Admit {patient} panel opens. Attending clinician is a searchable staff picker and is required — an admission cannot be saved without naming who is responsible for the stay. Its helper text says why: “Responsible for this stay. Others can be added to the treatment team from the ward chart.” If the clinic’s staff list is empty, the panel says so and the patient cannot be admitted until someone is added to staff.
3
Set the Patient status
Choose one of the four tiles — Critical, Under observation, Stable or Recovering. It opens on Under observation.
4
Add the diagnosis and summary, and admit
Admitting diagnosis (optional) and Admission summary (optional) are what every colleague reads first on the bed grid, so write them for them rather than for the record. Select Admit patient.
The attending is never guessed. Some screens used to show whoever last wrote a round note, or an arbitrary doctor on the clinic’s staff list, when nobody had actually been asked. An admission now requires a real answer, and anywhere a stay has none — this page’s bed cards, the ward chart, the admissions panel — it reads Not assigned rather than a name nobody chose.
Record observations
From an occupied bed, or from the ward chart’s Flowsheets tab, Record vitals opens the same form used everywhere vitals are captured in the product — blood pressure (with position and cuff details), pulse, respiratory rate, temperature, oxygen saturation and device, weight, height, blood sugar and more, in your hospital’s chosen display units. Saving adds the set to the patient’s flowsheet rather than editing the last one — a correction is always a new set. When the patient was admitted from triage or a consultation, the SnapShot opens with From triage — the complaint, triage note, presentation, vitals and any labs or imaging ordered at triage. It is read live from the triage record, so it needs a connection and shows nothing for an admission that did not come from a triage. Care History has two sub-tabs: Timeline, the running record of the stay, and Triage notes, which lists every triage recorded for the patient — the one that led to this admission first, marked This visit, then earlier ones newest first — each with the full note. When the admission did not come from a triage, nothing is marked This visit, and a patient with no triage shows “No triage notes for this patient.” Every vital-sign reading, wherever it was taken, is one flowsheet for the patient. The Flowsheets tab shows it with a This stay / All readings toggle: just this admission’s own readings, or everything ever recorded for the patient anywhere — triage, any ward stay, or the client record — each row labelled with where it was taken. Recording observations is restricted by role, and can also be granted per person.Read the ward chart
Opening an occupied bed opens the inpatient chart. Its tabs are: SnapShot · Flowsheets · MAR · Orders · Notes · Results · Care History · Problem List · Care Plan · Medications · Maternity · History · Media · Mail Maternity appears only for an admission with a labour or an open pregnancy behind it — see below. Mail lists the email conversations somebody has linked to this patient, and follows them between admissions the way the Problem List does — correspondence belongs to the person, not the stay. It is read-only here: a conversation is put on a chart from Mail itself. The tabs that list a long record — History, Media and the Earlier results section of Results — show 10 entries at a time, with a per page control and a count under them.Two pairs of names look alike and are not. Care History is the running record of this stay; History is the structured past history a provider entered. The Problem List belongs to the patient and follows them between admissions; the Care Plan belongs to this admission and ends with it.
The treatment team
The chart’s Admission card, in the left-hand rail, carries the stay’s basics — Ward, Bed, Admitted, Day of stay and Attending. Select the pencil next to the card’s title to open Treatment team. The panel has four parts:- Attending clinician — the name and Since {date}, or Not assigned in amber when nobody has been named.
- Rest of the team — everyone else currently on the stay, with their role and “since {date}”, or No one else is on the team yet.
- An add form — choose a Role (Attending, Consultant, Resident, Nurse or Other), the Clinician, and an optional Note. The button reads Assign attending when nobody is attending yet, Hand over when you are replacing the current attending, or Add to team for any other role.
- History — everyone who has since left the team, with their role, the period they served (“start – end”), and their note. No earlier team members. when nothing has ended yet.
A handover never overwrites who was responsible before. Assigning a new attending ends the previous one’s row and starts a new one at the same instant, so “who was responsible on a given day” always has an answer. Selecting Remove on a member asks you to confirm — Remove the attending clinician or Remove from the team — and their time on the stay stays in History. Removing the attending leaves the stay Not assigned until someone else is named.
Guardians
Where a patient has a guardian recorded, a Guardians card appears in the chart’s left-hand rail. Each row gives the person’s name, a Primary badge where they are the primary guardian, and then their relationship and what they may see:A guardian recorded earlier may read Can access records although nobody chose it. That answer used to be filled in automatically when a guardian was added; it is not any more, and nothing was rewritten when that changed. So on an older row, Can access records is not by itself evidence that anybody decided. Re-answer it on the patient’s record where it matters.
The pregnancy on the ward chart
Where the patient has an open pregnancy record, a Pregnancy card joins the chart’s left-hand rail — the same card the consultation chart carries, in the same order: the gestation, a Post-dates badge from 42 weeks, Expected delivery, Gravida / Para and the risk factors recorded at booking. It is amber when she is post-dates; red belongs to the allergy band alone. The card is in the rail, so it shows from large screens up. On a narrower screen the gestation is on the stay line under her name instead, which is why that segment is there. The gestation on the stay line and the gestation on the card are worked out once, together, and change over at midnight — so the two can never disagree by a day.A delivered or closed pregnancy record produces neither. The stay line stamps what she is now, so a record that has been closed stops stamping rather than counting weeks past a birth. The Maternity tab can still be there when the card is not: the tab is the record of a labour that happened.
The Maternity tab
A Maternity tab appears on the ward chart for an admission with a live delivery record on that stay, or a patient with an open pregnancy record. It carries the delivery record, the labour chart and the babies, so a woman labouring on your ward is charted from her ward chart rather than from another module.The tab is decided by the record, never by role and never by sex. It is present because there is a pregnancy or a labour to show. A patient with neither has no tab, and that is not a claim about who they are.
Ward notes belong to the person who wrote them
On the Notes tab each round note and nursing note is its author’s. Only the author can correct their own entry — the pen appears on your notes and nowhere else, owners and managers included. A colleague’s entry shows Written by their name; to add to it, select Add follow-up note under it, write your own entry and sign it. It appears under the original, which is never edited. Follow-up notes also show beside the entry wherever the note is read. If you try to save over a colleague’s note you are told “This note was written by …” — nothing has changed on their note.Run the drug round
The MAR tab is the drug chart. For each due dose you can give it — a dialog asks Record this dose as given?, states that it is recorded against your name, and you confirm with Record as given — or use Hold this dose or Record a refusal, both of which require a reason before they will save. Edit schedule opens the schedule sheet for a drug. A Needs scheduling band above the grid catches active drugs with no schedule at all — without it an unscheduled drug is invisible, and a blank grid reads as “nothing due”. Read the two empty messages carefully: No doses due in this window. means the drug is active and nothing falls here, while No doses in this window — this drug is no longer generating any. means it has been stopped.Claiming the round
Claim this round reserves that patient’s outstanding doses for the device you are holding, so you can keep recording if the signal drops and so a second nurse cannot give the same dose elsewhere. Hand back releases it. A round claimed by someone else shows amber with no way to take it — give from the device that holds it, or ask an owner to release it.Order for an inpatient
New order opens a tabbed sheet. Where it cannot be used it disables itself and says why: This stay has ended — nothing further can be ordered against it, or Ordering needs a connection. Observations and notes carry on offline; ordering and discharge do not, and an amber banner explains that a bed is a shared resource. See Working offline.Who can do this
The ward pages check nothing of their own when you open them — anyone who can reach the Inpatient group can read a bed grid and a chart, and Role navigation is what narrows that. What you may do inside is decided by role and by permissions, granted per person:
Owners and managers can always admit or discharge, whatever a clinic has chosen. Enforcement is opt-in per person — anyone never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”. A denied action is recorded in the audit log while an allowed one is not, so hiding the group from a role is a convenience, not a security boundary. See Staff permissions and Facility settings.
Check it worked
- The patient occupies the bed on the grid, with the diagnosis you entered.
- Saved observations appear on the chart’s Flowsheets tab.
- A recorded dose shows as given on the MAR grid, against your name.
Common issues
No beds appear
No beds appear
You have picked a ward but not a sub-ward — the panel says Select a ward first. The grid only builds after the second choice.
No wards available — Please contact your administrator
No wards available — Please contact your administrator
No wards exist yet. An owner creates them under Settings → Ward Management; see Wards and beds.
No clinicians are recorded on this clinic's staff list yet, so this patient cannot be admitted
No clinicians are recorded on this clinic's staff list yet, so this patient cannot be admitted
The Attending clinician picker has nobody to choose from. Add the clinician to the clinic’s staff list, then try admitting again.
Only doctors and nurses can record vitals
Only doctors and nurses can record vitals
Recording observations is restricted by role, and can also be granted per person. Ask an owner or manager.
The MAR grid is empty but the patient is on drugs
The MAR grid is empty but the patient is on drugs
Look at the Needs scheduling band above the grid — an active drug with no schedule produces no doses at all. Select Edit schedule to give it one.
The round is claimed by someone else
The round is claimed by someone else
Give from the device holding the round, or ask an owner or manager to release it. There is deliberately no way to take a live claim.
New order is disabled
New order is disabled
Hover it for the reason: This stay has ended — nothing further can be ordered against it, or Ordering needs a connection.
FAQ
Can I admit a patient without a consultation?
Can I admit a patient without a consultation?
No. Admission starts from the consultation that decided a bed was needed, so the reason for the stay is always attached to it. Open a consultation first.
Does the Problem List reset when the patient goes home?
Does the Problem List reset when the patient goes home?
No. It belongs to the patient and follows them into their next admission. The Care Plan is the one that ends with the stay.
Can I change who is attending partway through a stay?
Can I change who is attending partway through a stay?
Yes — open Treatment team from the Admission card’s pencil and select Hand over. The previous attending’s time moves to History rather than being overwritten, so a stay always has a full record of who was responsible and when.
What happens to a claimed round if I go home with it?
What happens to a claimed round if I go home with it?
A claim covers the next few hours and expires on its own, so a flat trolley never blocks a ward overnight. An owner or manager can release one sooner.
Where do I review a stay after the patient leaves?
Where do I review a stay after the patient leaves?
Under Ward discharges, which keeps the whole stay — timeline, consultations, nursing notes, prescriptions, lab tests, services, radiology and vitals.