by Toni Shortsleeve

Every step brings something new on my Outreachy journey

This is the fourth installment of my Outreachy Internship articles. I’m writing one every two weeks to provide updates along my journey, and I have tried to stay on schedule. You can read my previous articles if you need to catch up or be reminded of what has happened so far.

In my first article, I shared how I beat the odds and got accepted as an Outreachy intern working with LibreHealth. The next article discussed my preparation to begin the actual internship after I was accepted. In the last article, I talked about a few of the technical challenges I experienced. Today, I’ll share what has been happening since then.

What I’m doing

The LibreHealth Toolkit is a software API and user interface that can be used to create Electronic Health Records. The LibreHealth Radiology suite is a customized version of the LibreHealth Toolkit with additional tools for radiology and imaging professionals.

I am working on LibreHealth non-technical User Guides for both the Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Radiology modules. It’s been exciting to learn the workflow for Providers as well as Staff in the EHR module. I’m also in the process of learning the workflow for the Radiology Department.

I’ve enjoyed using the LibreHealth EHR demo site to create a new facility for a doctor’s practice, and the staff and procedures required to run the facility. I use Snag-it, Photoshop and the Google Inspector as needed to make the images work for the documentation.

The LibreHealth EHR demo allows me to keep the User Preference and new Patient information, so that it is still there the next time I use it.

Very Little Tech

I’m not yet as familiar with how the LibreHealth Radiology module should work or how easy it will be to keep the new patient and staff information that I will want to create. So I’m planning to download the actual software to make sure I can work with it.

I’m also hoping to create an easy-to-follow guide for downloading and installing the Toolkit and Radiology software.

I really like my tech mentor, and I’ve benefited from the way he approaches problem solving. When I work with the software and encounter any errors or messages, I tell him of the newest message that I see on my computer. It’s always fun when he says “hmm” or “weird”. After a short time, he gives me another solution to try out, which I test and let him know the outcome.

Currently, the Docker and Radiology install is on hold until I hear back from him again.

More Documentation

But this was very good timing. My documentation mentor came back. He reviewed the second revision of my documentation and offered a few more suggestions. I like working with him because he explains why I should make those changes. And he listens to my thoughts and answers my questions patiently.

Since I was working on two different documents with similar styling, I had to ensure that the changes were consistently implemented in each document.

One user guide, the “Provider Orders”, follows a patient from check-in at the front desk, to visiting with the doctor. It walks through how the doctor documents the visit and then creates an Order for the patient to receive an X-ray. This document has been revised based on my mentor’s suggestions and is awaiting approval.

The other user guide, the “Encounters”, follows the patient through a similar process. However, in this document the doctor prescribes an injection and we follow the complete process to checkout.

Another Step Backwards

I returned back to working on the “Encounters” documentation. I referred back to the Encounters video that I’ve been using as a base and re-opened the demo that I have used to create these user stories.

The Login Screen was in Spanish. I don’t speak or read Spanish. ?

I did what I thought was correct and brought the language back to American English. But it didn’t change. My documentation mentor looked at it and made a few suggestions on how to fix it. After we tried everything we thought would work, we put the call out to our tech mentor.

He immediately knew what was wrong and fixed it quickly. Imagine my embarrassment when he said, it could also be fixed in the Administrative => Global screen. The only one thing I forgot to check. ?

Another Step Forward

So I’m back on track again for the “Encounters” documentation and hoping this will help with the Radiology workflow.

I have found out more about Diagnosis, Procedure and Medication Billing codes. I will be going back to refine a couple of the images that changed due to this new information. I hope to have a second revision of the Encounters document completed in a few days.

Meanwhile…

Needless to say, I haven’t been doing much editing on the freeCodeCamp Medium publication lately. I finally checked in to see what freeCodeCamp Medium has been publishing lately. I was excited to see the article by Quincy Larson announcing the freeCodeCamp 2018 Top Contributor Award Winners.

There were just over 200 people chosen for these awards. I’m excited and thankful to be among the ones chosen, and hoping to attend the New York celebration.

More Next Time

Now, back to work. I hope next time I can tell you more about the inner workings of LibreHealth Radiology.

I think one of my favorite parts about writing these articles is finding really cool header images. The ones I use are from Pixabay.