Is there a global planned to turn off the new tabs in encounters area?
I’m just curious. Why would this help?
I guess the question is why does the new row help? As I think about this new row of tabs, I think perhaps it should come down to workflows, or maybe form design in general. I guess I am just advocating for preserving as much screen space for clinical data from the clinician’s interface perspective. It is a fine balance between reducing clicks and mouse movements. If there were a global, clinicians could hide/show it, perhaps like the “togglable” arrow for the patientData div. That toggle function exists in my opinion to give the clinician more valuable screen real estate.
Does the average user open more than two forms for every encounter? This feature would allow the user to close them all with one “X” click of the parent “Encounter tab” . OK this is nice - provided each sub-encounter page has an autosave feature or at least a way to check and alert the user if the entered data was not being saved before being closed by this parent tab.
Why not have these encounter-related pages be new tabs, named for their form/title, in the current tab structure, aka “Kevin’s Tabs”? They can be closed, or when the next patient encounter is opened, these tabs are overwritten when a same form/title form is opened? If the goal is to remove “Kevin’s Tabs” for a more modular approach, like a menu bar, or a bootstrap navbar, then we have to wait until these JS libraries mature a bit more, or write it ourselves…
If clinicians are opening more than three forms per encounter, perhaps we need a better way to design forms? That’s way too much mouse and hand movements per encounter IMHO. In my workflows so far, what is available in these new tabs is available elsewhere nearby, or in the form itself. Perhaps we should look at modular form drop ins for the form creation tools to add in HPI,PMH,ROS,Imp/Plan,Billing, MU Targets, etc as desired by the user, so they are right there in the form for the clinician?
So, if there were a global, I could selfishly hide the row, have more real estate on the screen, and not have to think about all these other things…
Ray
An approach I toke while developing an Occupational Health module for OpenEMR is the concept of form groups. Say a particular company employee is required an annual physical so, based on their industry the physical requires DOT, OSHA and other certifications along with normal vitals and history(industry based) then those forms are available in an action bar(similar to tabs) that allows moving between the required forms until done. Any form that is opened within that encounter group will always allow access to related form for that visit type.
I just like the idea of form groups with the needed forms right there. Here is example of action bar:
I use the same approach as you with the Eye Form but I use a bootstrap navbar menu that matches the top (compact) menu. I also do this on the new Flow Board, Recall Board and Messages page. In these new pages the menu can be toggled opened and closed and this setting is a sticky user preference common to them all.
I was very hesitant to even add these sub-menus though because of the mess it might lead to given all the UX changes, but I had to add something like you did in your form to allow the user to easy get to all the new functionality. Maybe I am just a little more worried now because on some encounter pages there will be FOUR rows of navigation/tabs.
Occupational Health module for OpenEMR : Every time you open a subsection area using your form’s title bar, does another tab appear in this new row above it? And so on? Hey if this make sense to the clinicians I am all for it. You could argue that they know it was done because there is an “open” tab in this new row? Maybe instead you could change the color of your menu tab, and check the global to hide this tab row for this form…
It all just seems like a slippery slope - maybe the focus should be on making the main menu act more like an application menu. When switching out of the framed version, I saw this as an opportunity to re-purpose the top menu (left_nav menu) to help the user with Flow. We then started on the top-bar menu customization, but now instead we are moving to more and more rows of tabs. I think we need a smarter design for the top menu and a better way to integrate work flows and tabs into that from a user perspective. I am not smart enough to design this but as a user I’d like it.
So, again, for selfish reasons I’d like a global to toggle this new rows of tabs so I can stop thinking about all the reasons we had to add a new row of tabs. That said, I won’t set it to display: none locally yet - I will keep it visible to test it further in the exam room…
I use the concept of history for any given form so user can view a previous form then move back to current(I think this is very useful). New forms auto persist once certain form criteria is met. All forms are self contained one page forms with any form support(print,save etc) as part of form. I use panels for other form functions where top menu bar only opens form with form status like new form for this encounter display as info boxes. I generally stay away from sub menus in favor of action buttons or anchors within the forms context. So to answer, the top menu is always just the form open link and not context based on particular form.
So bottom line is that for a given visit type any form opened that is necessary to that visit will always allow access to any other form required for the visit.
But this is moving away from original question i.e turning on/off tab feature and from my short experience looking at the new code for encounter tabs I’m not sure this will be easily done. Something @sunsetsystems will need to give guidance.
I like your approach. It makes perfect sense from a user perspective to have the pertinent links right at hand. I have a question.
When you open a new form from your action bar, this new row for open encounter forms ABOVE your action bar, below “Kevin’s Tabs”, will add another tab for this form? If during a single encounter you click 5 things on your persistent action bar, will there will now be 5 tabs listed in this new tab bar above the action bar? Is this what happens?
I see now. Whenever a new/current encounter form is opened that is part of the visit forms group then the forms group menu bar is presented for access to all forms in that group regardless if from Kevin’s menu or past encounters. If a non grouped form, lets say a nation note LBF is opened then it is independent and opened as a normal encounter form. Remember though that each individual form (grouped or not) will still appear as part of the encounter just as though it is current OpenEMR workflow.
Adding to the group, on the fly, is something I did not consider but certainly will now…thanks.
Further clarify, only one tab is opened, the one that originated the group and is contained in that tab
edit: I will update my demo site and you can go there to get an idea of how this works.