A Kardex form for nurses —also known as a cheat sheet or flowchart by long term care professionals—is a file used for summaries and overviews of residents’ care. Traditional Kardex forms were in paper format, until, as The Balance noted, the passing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)—which was a turning point in healthcare. It was then that nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and other long term care facilities were required to update their documentation practices regularly, hence the need to move from paper records to long term care EHR. One consequence of this was that nurses would now require sufficient EHR training. The advantages of using electronic Kardex over paper records are numerous, and they include:
- Increased accuracy
- Increased speed of recording and retrieving data
- Greater privacy and security for residents
- Increased work productivity
- Reduced cost
Contact us here if you would like to test drive our user-friendly long term care software.
How to Get a Nursing Kardex PDF
As nursing homes move from paper records to nursing home EHR, they face several barriers to the adoption of LTC software, as noted by the National Library of Medicine. These barriers include:
- Cost: LTC software is not cheap, and some long term care facilities may be reluctant to pay for them or might not have the financial means to pay for the high cost of a long term care EHR.
- Time: Long term care software vendors use different formats, which means that nurses might have to dedicate themselves to learning more than one system. Nurses, of course, have busy schedules caring for their residents—a problem that has only been further exacerbated during the current staffing crisis in nursing homes—so finding the time for additional training can be difficult
- Computer illiteracy: Although smartphones are used by nearly everyone, desktop computer interfaces are quite different, and not all nurses will have experience with them. Additionally, nurses familiar with using touch screens on their phones may find it challenging to adapt to using keyboards and a mouse.
- Security and privacy concerns: Hacking and cybersecurity are concerns in this digital age. Residents in nursing homes have sensitive information that they do not want to be publicized. Securing IT infrastructure is a complicated process that nurses and administrators may not be familiar with. Hence, they would need to hire an IT expert, which again risks exposing resident information to an external third party. Additionally, bad password practices—such as writing it on a note and sticking it on one’s desk—further compromise resident data privacy.
- Software complexity: Different software come with various features and user interfaces. This complexity can prove problematic, as nurses may fail to utilize all of a software’s features or abandon its use completely.
- Lack of technical support: Technical support from software providers may not always be readily available for nurses. As software providers are limited in how much customer support they can offer, nurses can have long waiting hours as they seek technical help. Experience Care differentiates itself by not outsourcing its customer support and offering a quick average response time of 54 minutes—a first in long term care—for all its clients. Experience Care has dedicated client service representatives located throughout the U.S. working in all time zones, which means customers can speak to a real person from 5 A.M. Eastern to 8 P.M. Eastern.
- Reliability: As convenient as software is, there is the risk of bad code causing system crashes. When long term care software crashes, services to residents can be disrupted. Nurses may have concerns over how reliable a given long term care EHR is, and should it crash, what backup systems are available if any.
Although there are several advantages that EHR has over paper records, some nurses may still prefer to have a nursing Kardex PDF over an electronic Kardex. You can download and print this PDF version of our electronic Kardex below:
Printable Nursing Kardex Template
The printable nursing Kardex template shown is a Kardex form for nurses that can be used in any long term care facility. However, it is worth noting that the form is based on electronic Kardex nursing software, and thus is easier to use in a long term care software system. This PDF serves as a Kardex example of what nurses can expect when they are introduced to electronic Kardex but can also be used as a template for those on paper.
The Benefit of Our Kardex Form for Nurses
Our printable Kardex form for nurses helps introduce nurses to the layout of our electronic Kardex, while allowing them to use the template when caring for their residents in the facility. Some of the items that can be documented include:
- ADLs (resident eating, resident going for a walk)
- Resident preferences and interests (the resident prefers watching romance movies over action movies)
- Preferred bathing, sleep, and waking times (resident prefers to go to sleep at 7:30pm)
- Diet and liquid restrictions (the resident likes to not have carrots in their meals)
- Laundry arrangements and requests (the resident does not like the smell of fabric softener)
- Code status (DNR)
Go ahead and download our free Kardex form to use it in your facility.For more on recent trends in long term care, read our blog and subscribe to the LTC Heroes podcast.
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