I imagine writing clinical notes is the bane of every dentist’s existence.
When I graduated, all you needed to note down was ‘exam, NAD and S+P’. But now, we’re required to write reams of clinical notes. This compounds the stress of modern day-to-day dentistry.
Solutions like practice management system note templates and quick notes can help. But there’s always a nagging fear that you might not delete something from an existing list or skip over something important.
At times, as dentists we may also have unrealistic expectations that the dental nurse can keep up with the clinical conversation. Not only that, but they need to type it up at the pace it is being discussed with some patients.
It’s an incredibly taxing situation, in particular when you think about the technical language or jargon, complicated spelling and the underlying likelihood of any of us making typing mistakes.
As with everything in dentistry, it all comes down to the time you take. There’s never enough time, so I was constantly on the lookout for a better and faster note-taking solution.
When the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown started, our profession was put on standby. I had a chance to pause and see how I could use this extra time I had to improve my practice I returned to work.
I had seen a few articles and advertisements in the dental media about Kiroku. They were offering a free trial, so I took the plunge.
Instantly, I liked the interface, as well as the customisation available. I used the stock templates and took time to customise them to my specific needs.
I found the COVID-19 templates to be incredibly useful, especially for phone triage, as well as the ever-changing rules on PPE and COVID-19 risk factors.
It acts just like a flow chart but with no real worries about leaving something in that shouldn’t be there. It’s really easy to see if any boxes have been left unticked.
That makes it much easier for dental nurses to use as well – they are able to click a box rather than typing everything out. In my experience, they really like using it.
Kiroku seems to be regularly rolling out updates and the team is always responsive to feedback.
New templates are always being added and I’m constantly tinkering with mine. If we change materials, labs or techniques, for example, I can quickly make changes to specific templates or across all my templates.
This really helps to keep them up-to-date with our processes. I also wrote my own trauma template from scratch – though it is something I rarely need. But it’s a fantastic aid memoir to work through when I need it.
I am always happy to recommend Kiroku and several of my colleagues also use it.
Kiroku affords all the benefits of automated records, while being simple-to-use and adapt to your specific dental disciplines and individual patients.
Marcus Green, Associate Dentist
