Spelling

looker said:
I am not a lawyer but I would still say it's covered under patient/client privilege unless knowing the information is overwhelming in public interest sufficient to violate patient/client privileged such as many millions will be harmed if we do not get this information.
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The laws on this vary from country to country. In Canada a PCR can be subpoena'd as crown evidence in most criminal proceedings.
 
fortsmithman said:
The laws on this vary from country to country. In Canada a PCR can be subpoena'd as crown evidence in most criminal proceedings.
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Silly me, didn't notice you're from Canada. Ye in America it's much harder to subpoena medical records.
 
PCR's are subpoenaed all the time in the US. This is no Pt/client privilege in EMS. Hipaa provides protection for personal information. But the courts can still subpoena them at any time.

There are ways to learn to spell better and make sure your pcr is legible. Take your time and do it right. Do not spell medications wrong and do not use unacceptable practices of trying to misspell. Buy a medical dictionary and a pocket drug guide. Then you never have a reason to not do it right.
 
reaper said:
PCR's are subpoenaed all the time in the US. This is no Pt/client privilege in EMS. Hipaa provides protection for personal information. But the courts can still subpoena them at any time.

There are ways to learn to spell better and make sure your pcr is legible. Take your time and do it right. Do not spell medications wrong and do not use unacceptable practices of trying to misspell. Buy a medical dictionary and a pocket drug guide. Then you never have a reason to not do it right.
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I haven't had it happen in ems but had it happen in nemt. I fought it and won. Lawyers quashed it base on Hippa protection being medical info is convered under hippa
 
Me being a former manager, I definitely would notice spelling mistakes in applications. But that wouldn't necessarily bar them from being able to get a job. Some people just can't spell. It doesn't mean that they can't be awesome at what they do in their career.
 
looker said:
I probably am misunderstanding what you're saying. You mean a patient goes to lawyer in hopes of having some case against ambulance company? Otherwise reports are covered under patient/client privilege and any subpoenaed get quashed in court.
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Yeah. From what we were told people will hire lawyers to go on fishing expeditions to try and get money or get their bill reduced/eliminated.

We also have a County QA/QI committee, which includes medical directors and representatives from the different services. They review certain types of calls, like intubations, trauma activations and cardiac alerts. They can also request any chart without the provider knowing about it.
 
Spelling, grammar and handwriting are important. The best thing you can do is to work on it. Buy a dictionary, (print or electronic) and use it a lot. The more you use it the better you will get. Work on your handwriting. Not everything can be typed. Slow down and develop a handwriting or printing that other people can read. Take an English course and relearn the spelling and grammar you should have learned in school. If you were anything like me you didn't pay attention in that class and got the marks to prove it.

As others have said poor handwriting and grammatical errors just scream illiterate, uneducated and incompetent. You will never be perfect at it but keeping errors to a minimum will help you get and keep a job, defend yourself if need be and be more professional.

It is good that you recognize the problem and are all ready taking steps to remedy your situation.

Good luck.
 
Just because you are not the world's best speller doesn't mean that your EMT skills would go lacking. There are quite a few people I work with that cannot spell very well, they use what resources are available...including asking their partner at times.

Before you submit your final copy (for us it is our ePCR)...just be sure to use spell check and thoroughly read and re-read your chart and you should be fine. I know there are medications that I spell wrong a lot on the paper version of my PCR but I always look them up and spell them correctly on my ePCR (EMS charts). Also, the more you are around the medical terminology, you will learn how to spell the words better and you will also use abbreviations, sometimes medical abbreviations can be your best friend when it comes to writing a long/complicated PCR.
 
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