Secure chat is a feature that allows other members of the clinic to communicate with one another in real-time during a session. A few notes about appropriate use of this feature in clinic:

Please sign in to Secure Chat when you are in clinic.  This will allow staff to contact with you with immediately pertinent questions and information. Use the chat to contact nurses or other staff members about actions that need to happen while the patient is present.  If something does not need to occur immediately during the clinic session, instead send a staff message or other inbasket communication.

You may receive messages while seeing a patient.  It may be about an abnormal vital sign, need for an order or an issue with the schedulers or the patient’s arrival.  It is appropriate to wait to check a message if you are interacting directly with a patient to prevent disruption of your encounter, but please view and respond when you have a break to do so.

To make sure others do not send you messages while you are not available, consider changing your status to “do not disturb” or “offline.”  This will prevent inappropriate messages being sent to you while you are away.