The Pre-Charting Advantage: What It Is For, and Why It Usually Fails

Pre-charting works because it decides what a visit is for before you walk in. It fails when it becomes a shift before your shift. Here is the difference.

Most NPs have been told that pre-charting is the answer to after-hours documentation, and most have tried it. You came in before the doors opened to get through the morning's charts, or spent part of Sunday evening reading ahead for Monday. For a week or two the visits ran more smoothly, and then the habit gave way under everything else the day required.

That pattern is common enough to say something about the advice itself. Pre-charting is a real advantage, but it is usually explained as a method when its value lies in a decision, and it is usually practiced in time the schedule never set aside. Both problems are fixable, and neither one is a failure of discipline.