[kotaKat]

Digital x-ray has changed everything so much. Slap the Wi-Fi enabled plate under someone, click click, image already up on the screen and doc's reading it.

I (almost) broke my ankle and had to go to the ER to have it looked at and it was during a system downtime -- the doc did just that alongside the radiology tech from the machine's console instead of from a PACS workstation.

In a masscal event on one of these systems there's typically an 'emergency entry' option that lets you just input patients manually into the system and start shooting, so instead of the normal paperwork process they'll just image first and reconcile later.

[lostlogin]

It does get better when digital, but there is more to it than one might think when a good tech does it all in a few seconds and a couple of clicks. Positioning and adapting exposures isn’t always straightforward.

In terms of tracking imaging, you have to be able to track images back to a patient, and something identifying images needs to relate back. It’s a disaster otherwise and a complete waste of time. That ‘emergency patient’ function isn’t that helpful when it’s completely anonymous and there are several cases.

I’ve been a PACS admin for a brief time, and have seen enough to get twitchy.

[FireBeyond]

> In terms of tracking imaging, you have to be able to track images back to a patient, and something identifying images needs to relate back

The worst incident I have been on as a paramedic involved transporting 73 people from a train derailment. One of the simpler, but crude, methods we had as a fallback, was a sharpie and writing a number on foreheads, etc...

But we had MCI tags, which all have a unique number, would serve as a pseudo-MRN.