Call Sheet v.3
This Excel-based utility is designed to manage creating a Call Sheet for printing, to submit to the After-Hours Coordinator. It replaces a manually copy-and-paste approach to filling out this document. Call Sheet extends Excel through forms and code written in Visual-Basic for Applications, which is part of the Microsoft Excel product.
This Help file pertains to version 0.3 (v3).
Staff Names and Phone Numbers are alphabetically saved in the NamesPhones sheet (which is hidden), along with their roles in the Operating Theatre and Post-Op Recovery. These names and phone numbers and roles are used by the software to generate a call sheet: this is accomplished using the On-Call form, which is launched with a button on the first worksheet.
How to Best Use Help
While Call Sheet’s use seems pretty straight-forward to the developer, he realises that his approach to running software could differ wildly to other inhabitants of the solar system run software: hence, this Help file.
Why this approach to a Help file? See the footnote [1].
If the user “runs into a snag”, as in: doesn’t know how to proceed further, she can click on the Help button: there is one on each form and on the main worksheet. Clicking the Help button will bring up this Help document. If the user is on a form, this document will display Help for that form.
It is suggested to make use of the Quick Search feature if a brief perusal of the menu doesn’t reveal what the user needs help with.
For example, let’s say help is needed on the purpose of the “Search by First Name” toggle (tick box) on the On-Call form:
Moving the mouse cursor over the control will display a brief description of that control in a yellow box called a “tool-tip”. Most controls will display a tool-tip: keep in mind that sometimes the tool-tip text will appear beneath the control instead of next to the cursor.
The tool-tip displays the name of the control first, then a colon, then the description. Make a note of the text in the tool-tip box, click on the Help button, and then, in the Quick “Search docs” field in Help (this document):
…type the name of the button or control and press <Enter>.
If “Search docs” does not produce any results, please notify the developer.
Conventions used in this Document
This Help file uses certain conventions:
Stuff you type on
<Enter> - the ‘<’ and ‘>’ represent a physical key on a keyboard
Things to click on
[ Close ] - represents a clickable button
(_o_) - represents a selected radio button
(___) - represents a deselected radio button
[_X_] - represents a selected tick box
[___] - represents a deselected tick box
Notes
History, Caveats and How to Contact Me
History
CallSheet was developed after I learned that it was taking personnel almost a half-hour to put a Call Sheet together manually (the after-hours coordinator had been expecting printed instead of written for legebility reasons). If the kind user takes a moment to go over the key points of this document, it shouldn’t take any longer than a minute to make the selections and print the CallSheet form.
Caveats
Call Sheet is fully contained in a stand-alone Excel workbook. Although I would have preferred a proper database, Excel was all I had available within the organisation I was developing in, so I commandeered it to act as a flat-file database. Excel as a database is not ideal, but through the quirky magic of Visual Basic for Applications, it generally works as expected. No question it is definitely an improvement over manual copy-and-paste.
VBA itself is not the stellar language to write solutions in one could hope or wish for, and my knowledge on how it works is a bit less than comprehensive. Therefore, someone following me in trying to maintain/fix the code may wonder at some of the kludges I employed. As I learn more on how to do this all properly, the kludges have been removed. Whilst I tried to be as professional as I could developing this tool, Call Sheet is pedestrian code at best.
The developer of this tool makes no claims as to the accuracy or reliability of the data, nor are there any guarantees, implied or real, as to the document’s fitness for purpose. I.e., it is presented and delivered as-is. Please keep this in mind when using this tool. I ask the user’s patience with the code… it is what it is. If you manage to break it, you get to keep both pieces.
While the language it is written in - VBA - is proprietary, the code supporting the use of this document - i.e., the “software” - is FOSS: free/open-source software. Please see the Licence Page for the licence agreement associated with this software.
How to Contact the Developer
Whilst software developers endeavour to write clean, robust software with consistent, predictable behaviour, bugs do happen. The CallSheet developer is committed to supporting CallSheet, hence this document and a web presence on github.
A number of means exist to contact the developer:
To find the most current documentation - a (probably) updated version of this document - go to:
Getting Started
System Requirements
“Call Sheet” (also known as CallSheet) is an Excel workbook using Visual Basic for Applications (a scripting language) to facilitate creating a on-call document for Operating Theatres and Post-Op Recovery, to submit to the after-hours coordinator. As the software was written in and runs in Excel, there is no installation required except for Excel itself, which the organisation has provided. This workbook can be opened anywhere Excel is available. This file best serves the Operating Theatre when stored on a local drive. This document is contained in a csHelp folder and should accompany the Call Sheet workbook.
Starting Call Sheet
When you open Call Sheet in Excel 2016, security settings (set by Queensland Health IT services) may issue a security warning:
Some active content has been disabled. Click for more details.
Next to this warning is a button labelled [Enable Content]. Content must be enabled in order for the software to work. When you select [Enable Content], another security warning may appear, asking whether you wish to make this file a ‘Trusted Document’. If you wish to no longer see these warnings, click [Yes]. If you wish to disable warnings for networked files (any files that live on the server instead of on the PC you’re working on), tick the box in the lower left-hand corner.
Once content has been enabled, the Call Sheet workbook will resize itself to full-screen. The workbook defaults to the “CallSheet” worksheet:
…which has the call sheet form, and one larger button and two smaller buttons on it. The larger button with the caption (“Fill Out Call Sheet”) brings up the “On-Call” form that facilitates filling out the Call Sheet.
The Worksheets
Call Sheet is an Excel workbook comprised of several worksheets.
CallSheet
The first worksheet - called CallSheet - contains the form to be printed. It follows the original paper version in terms of structure, with regions to fill in extra staff and after-hours cases. These features are currently not used, but they are available.
The staff and phone number fields can be filled out manually, but it is faster to use the “On-Call” form, which was the whole point of creating this workbook.
The actual print area starts on row 110, well down the sheet, out of sight: this is by design, as it is important not to type into this area. The fields have special formulas which link them to corresponding fields at the top of the worksheet, so typing into the print region would remove the formulae and the sheet can not work as designed.
NamesPhones
Normally, this worksheet is only visible when the “On-Call” form is running: otherwise, it is hidden by the software [2]. The columns hold the following data:
Names - sorted, in LastName, FirstName format
Primary Phone - to be rung first
Secondary Phone - to be rung second
Role-ScrubScout - a “1” indicates this staffer performs this role
Role-Anaesthetics - a “1” indicates this staffer performs this role
Role-PACU - a “1” indicates this staffer performs this role
Role-OTA - a “1” indicates this staffer performs this role
Status - a “1” indicates an active status; “0”, inactive
Staff do sometimes return to the department so putting them as inactive preserves their information. If they have retired, of course, it is probably safe to delete their record.
Call History
The software supports maintaining a record on call staff, but as the program is sometimes used to merely enter names manually, the result is that records have not been very accurate.
The Bak Sheets
As a security measure, a copy of the interface (CallSheet) and of the NamesPhones sheet are saved as a backup.
Addendum
Footnotes
The On-Call Form
The main On-Call form drives filling out the CallSheet worksheet quickly and efficiently. The Help button on the form (“OCHelp”) will bring up this page directly.
Name-Order Toggle and Date
In the grey bar at the top of this form are two controls: the name-order toggle and the date field. The name-order toggle (“NameOrder”):
allows the user to search by first (given) names instead of the surname. For those of us who don’t know everyone’s surname, this option was introduced so that the name fields could display names in “GivenName Surname” format if desired, instead of the default “Surname, GivenName” (which is how they are entered and sorted in the NamesPhones worksheet).
Be sure to decide whether you want names displaying first name first or last name first (the default) before you start entering names. This toggle will become disabled when name selection has begun, and the only way to re-enable this toggle is by clearing all the fields.
At the top-right is the date field (“TodayDate”). The current date displays when the form is opened: however, if, say, the user wishes to fill out the call sheets in advance for the weekend, the date can be changed by simply typing in the desired dates or using the date-scroll arrows:
to advance the date.
Names and Phone Numbers
This section has three columns and two main sections: first and second call:
The dropdowns (collectively called “StaffName”) should hold only names of staff that work in that capacity. So, an OTA’s name should never appear in the Scrub dropdown. However, some individuals perform a number of roles, and therefore will appear in more than one dropdown.
The dropdowns can be used a number of ways: they can be opened with the arrow on the right side and the user can scroll down the list until she finds the name she’s after. However, it is infinitely faster to simply type a portion of the name, then press <TAB>.
The dropdown uses a form of predictive text. After choosing the name-order, with each letter the user types, the dropdown tries to autofill the field with a name. When the correct name appears, the user simply presses <TAB> on the keyboard to move to the next dropdown. If the name is not on the “NamesPhones” worksheet or, for some reason, not in the dropdown list, further typing will cease producing autofill text. Keep in mind that unless the “Names-Order” tickbox has not been ticked, the predictive text will assume the default ‘LastName, Firstname’ name order.
As the next dropdown becomes active, the numbers for the previously selected entry populate the text fields (Ring First | Ring Second) next to that dropdown.
This process quickly becomes intuitive, with a little practice. If the user realises the names are not displaying to her liking, she will need to remove all entries in the StaffName dropdowns in order to enable the “NameOrder” tickbox.
Note:
If information (such as phone numbers or role) on a staff member needs editing, it is best to perform that edit prior to assigning call (as in: filling out the On-Call form). Role changes need to be saved to the NamesPhones sheet first so that the dropdowns reflect those changes. For example: if someone who normally only works in PACU is also going to be available for Anaesthetics, that role addition needs to be done in order for that person to show up in the Anaes dropdown.
Action Buttons
The buttons at the bottom of the form consist of five buttons:
The “Write to Sheet” button (“WriteSheet”) writes the selections to the Call Sheet.
The “Clear Sheet” button (“ClearSheet”) clear entries on the sheet and on the form.
The “Add/Edit Staff” button (“AddEditStaff”) brings up the Edit staff form.
The “Help” button (“OCHelp”) brings up this document, opened on the On-Call page.
The “Close” button (“OCClose”) closes the On-Call form.
Call Sheet - The Forms
Call Sheet uses names, phone numbers and roles entered into the NamesPhones sheet to populate the Call Sheet fields on the On-Call form. It was developed to facilitate publishing the Call Sheet form for the Operating Theatres and Post-Op Recovery to submit to the after-hours coordinator.
Call Sheet has two forms… the “On-Call” form, launched from the Call Sheet worksheet and the “Add or Edit Staff” form, launched from the “On-Call” form.
The On-Call Form
The main form in Call Sheet is launched via the “Fill Out Call Sheet” button on the “Call Sheet” worksheet:
Whilst the fields on the sheet can be filled out manually, the provided “On-Call” form:
is designed to make the process much faster and less likely to create errors. The “On-Call” form has three basic areas:
The Add or Edit Staff Form
The “Add or Edit Staff” form:
is launched by the green “Add/Edit Staff” button on the “On-Call” form. This form has three basic areas:
Add or Edit Staff Information
The “Add or Edit Staff” form is launched from the “On-Call” form.
Find Name in List
The dropdown at the top of the form (“AllStaff”) allows the user to find a staff member’s name and details for editing. The Name-order is whatever was selected in the “On-Call” form. The phone number(s) is/are next to the name. There is a number at the end of the field, but it normally won’t be visible and is only useful to the software itself.
A name can be found by typing the name, or by clicking on the down-arrow of the dropdown to display the names in the dropdown list. Select a name by clicking on it, and the details of that individual will display in the fields below the dropdown, including the role(s) that person has in the department.
This dropdown list of staff does not include inactive staff names by default. In order to include those in the list, select the “Show All” (“ShowAll”) tickbox. The list in the dropdown will be refreshed to include the inactive staff names.
Staffer Details
Required staff detail information includes:
First Name (“FirstName”)
Last Name (“LastName”)
Primary phone number (“MainPhone”) [3]
Role
Active status - defaults to “Active”
The secondary phone number (“SecndPhone”) is not required: however, it is helpful to have in case the individual cannot be reached via the primary number.
Staffer Role
In the On-Call form, staff members appear in a given dropdown based on roles performed. That role selection is done here:
Scrub/Scout (“ScrubScout”)
Anaes “thetics” (“Anaes”)
PACU “Post-op recovery” (“PACU”)
OTA “Operating theatres assistant” (“OTA”)
Note: Bear in mind that a staff member can perform more than one role in the Operating Theatres and Post-op Recovery.
Below the role tickboxes is the “Active” (“DeActive”) tickbox. Unticking this box will keep the staff member’s record on NamesPhones but will render it invisible to the StaffNames dropdowns. [4]
Footnotes
Notes
Licence Agreement
GNU General Public Licence v3
Terms of General Public Licence, version 3:
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the Licence, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public Licence for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public Licence along with this programme. If not, see:
Full GNU GPL (need online access to view this document)