Adding a New Prescription

Click on the Add button (Blue Plus icon) to open the new prescription window. Prescriptions can also be added from within the Consult Window using the Add Script button.

Genie begins searching the MIMS database once the third letter has been typed. You can narrow the selection by continuing to type more of the drug name.

To prescribe one of the displayed drugs, use the Up and Down arrow keys to highlight the desired drug and then press the ENTER key, click the Select button or double-click on the desired drug.

Dose, Frequency, Instructions

Once the medication has been accepted you can specify the dose in the dose combo box, by either:

1. clicking the drop down arrow and selecting the appropriate dose from the list

2. by typing the first few letters/numbers of the dose and Genie will type ahead any matching doses in the list

3. by typing a dose not in the list in full and Genie will give you the option to save this dose to your list

Press the TAB key to move to the Frequency field. The cursor will move to the Frequency combo box. This works in exactly the same way as the Dose window.

For many medications the Instructions field may be filled automatically by the MIMS Quarterly. To enter your own instructions, press TAB to move to the Instructions combo box which works the same way as the dose and frequency combo boxes.

Once you have been through these steps the prescription window should look like this:

The Repeats filed automatically defaults to the maximum number permissible. To change this to Nil repeats enter "0" or "n" in this field.

The 'Category' box allows you to assign a category to the prescription. Prescriptions marked as Single Use (S) are automatically deleted from the patient's record once they are more than 30 days old. Deletion occurs during the Cleanup process when the last client machine quits Genie. Additionally, prescriptions marked as Single Use (S) and Hide (H) will not be referenced using 'Current Medications' for Referral/Reply Letters. If you wish to have such medications referenced, then you will need to change this reference field to 'Prescription History' (see Referral/Reply Letters (Patient Correspondence) for more information).

Antibiotics, vaccinations, and cough mixture, etc are automatically marked as a Category S medication.

At this stage you can click the Save button, or press ENTER to save the prescription to the patient's record. However there are several other actions you may also take using the buttons in this screen.

The Memorise Dose checkbox will "remember" the dose, frequency and instructions for the selected medication, so that the next time you prescribe it in this window, the does, frequency and instructions fields will be filled automatically.

The MIMS 1/4 button will display the MIMS Quarterly information for the selected medications.

The MIMS Annual button will open the MIMS Annual application. Genie expects to find the MIMS Annual within the Genie folder on the client machine.

Add to QuickScript

The QuickScript menu is a place to store your most commonly prescribed medications, allowing you to quickly prescribe any item in the menu for any patient.

If you want to add the selected medication, as well as the associated dose, frequency, and instructions, information to your QuickScript menu, click on the Add to QuickScript button.

When a QuickScript is added, information regarding the category and reason for the medication is saved.

Although Genie places no limitations on the number of items you can have in this menu, some versions of Windows will not display the menu if you have more than 32 or 64, depending on your screen resolution. If you exceed the number of items capable of being displayed, then nothing happens when you click on the menu.

To get around this problem, there is actually an invisible button between the Quickscript menu and the Add button.

If you hold down the ALT key whilst clicking in this area, the last item in the QuickScript menu will be deleted, allowing you to once again view and edit the menu.

In order to add any further items to the QuickScript menu, you would either have to delete some of the existing items, or increase the screen resolution in your Display Control Panel.

Drug Interactions

Once a drug is selected to be prescribed, Genie performs an allergy interaction and pregnancy check. If an interaction with another drug in the patient's current medication list is found, the following window will be displayed.

This window contains an explanation of the interaction and indicates the severity. You can still prescribe the medication by clicking the Prescribe button. The Interaction Level can be set in your User Preferences. It ranges from 0 to 5, where 0  has all possible and potential interactions and 5 has no interaction checking at all. A level of 3 is usually the best in practice. This covers Low, Moderate and High degrees of interaction, but does not include Unestablished interactions or those of No Clinical Significance. You can change the level of interaction checking by clicking the Modify button at the top right of the new prescription window. This will open your User Preferences (see User Preferences for more information). Click on the Clinical tab and set the level in here.

If the patient has been marked as allergic to the selected drug, or it's class, an allergy warning will be displayed.

As with interaction warnings, you still have the ability to over-ride the warning by clicking on the Prescribe button.

For drugs dangerous to pregnant women the following warning will appear

Add New Drug

The Add New Drug button allows you to add new drugs to the Drug Index. These can either be for increase quantities of an existing drug, or a totally new entry For example, if the patient is currently on Accupril20mg daily but needs to increase to 20mgbd, then you will probably want to add an entry for a quantity of 60 with 5 repeats to be prescribed as an Authority item. To do this, find and highlight the current entry for Accupril20mg.

Click on the Add New Drug button. The following window will appear:

Click on the Copy button.

Enter the quantity required

Enter the number of repeats required.

Click on the Authority button.

The new drug entry will appear in the prescriptions window, allowing you to select it for prescribing.

To add a totally new drug entry, click on the Add New Drug button. When asked if you want to create a New Drug or Copy an existing one, click the New button. The following window will appear:

Enter the details of the drug and click the Save button. You will then be able to search on this information in the new prescriptions window.

User Added Drugs

The User Added Drugs button will display a list of drug entries added by users i.e. not supplied by MIMS