5.a. Suggestions for Getting Started

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To save you time, there are a few suggestions that I have before you dive in.
- Have a plan - making a Soapnote is like a reverse engineering process. Start with good clinical documentation and work backwards.
- Start small - try a few small templates before you try to put together the grand unifying medical calculator.
- Revise the wheel, don't reinvent it - there's probably already something similar to what you're trying to do - find it, copy it, and customize it for your needs.
- Save your work early and often.
- Complex isn't always better. Forms affect efficiency. There probably is a sweet spot for the proportions of user input versus boilerplate. My opinion is that lots of clicking, selecting, and checking takes my hands off the keyboard and slows me down. I really hate lots of checkboxes, especially if I going back and forth between selecting and typing text. Clicking is great for patients filling out forms and for nicely formatted calculators, but it's horrible for a provider trying to get through a visit.
- You can post a simple boilerplate SOAPnote in a matter of moments. You can always come back to it later and pepper it with SOAPnote Tags to make it more interactive.

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