What is a Drug Course?  Drug Courses are the directions given (written) when prescribing a medication including, dose, route, frequency, substitutions, refills, etc.

Now, prescription details can match a format the prescribing clinician prefers.

For example, a Drug Course pick list item for Amoxicillin might include:

    500mg tab, 1 tid, #30, Substitution-Allowed, R-0   or

    250mg chewables 1 po tid for 10 days. Substitution-Not Allowed, 0 Refills  

instead of:    

    500 mg (tablets)  Dose- 1 each   Freq- 3 times a day  Route - orally   Quantity-#30  Substitution-Allowed Refills- 0

The user can create a prescription in whatever format is preferred, and have SOAPware store the values for future use. Even for the same drug, this process can be infinitely repeated to have as many different courses for that drug as desired. Subsequently, when the drug is prescribed, the user simply picks from the list of pre-defined Drug Courses in order to fill in the all the prescription sub-items one step.

In earlier versions of SOAPware, the user had to first select the drug form, and then select a series of multiple sub-items for each Sig (i.e. Dose, Frequency, Route, etc.), dispense amounts, substitution status and refills. This created the need to have multiple, completed prescriptions for each medication, because a new one had to be created for each set of Form/Sig values.

Other consideration regarding Drug Courses include:

   * Many different medications can have the same Drug Course.

   * Drug Courses can be pre-defined, stored and selected via pick lists.

   * Selecting a particular Drug Course will automatically place that course's values into the prescription.

   * Each Drug Course can be displayed using your own custom text (500 mg. tablet BID or 500 mg tab bid etc.).

IMPORTANT: to use this feature optimally, go to the Tools menu>Options>Structured Rx>Click on the Headers tab and then make sure that there is NOT a check next to, "Visible only when empty.  Sig Header".  Log out of SOAPware and log back in for this to take effect.

Insert SMARText medication into the medication field of the SOAPnote.  To do this, type in the medication name and then press Shift F11 on the keyboard to search SMARText.  Double click on the medication to insert it into the field.

Select the strength, SIG, Quantity, Substitutions and Refills.

Now, to create a new Drug Course, Right-click the drug name, and Click the Store Drug Course menu item. In the Store Drug Course dialog, Type the the Drug Course Description, for example, 125 mg 1 po tid. Click Create.

Repeat the above steps for as many Drug Courses as needed for the medication.

To remove a course, Click the X that is located in Quick Access next to the Description of the one to remove.