Prescribing medications in the EMR

It has taken me several months to figure out the best way to prescribe medications in the treatment section of a progress note: ie. so they will correctly populate the ongoing medication list. 
For most of us it is easier to be shown  how to do this when you are in the clinic, but let me give you the main concepts and if you need one of us to show you when you are next in the clinic please ask!

1)Current medication Section:
When you are in a progress note and  you are seeing a patient for whom medications have already been entered these will show up in the "Current med" section. You can update  this section if the patient is taking different medications.(for example a consultant prescribed a medication that the patient is now taking--or if the patient never started the medication you prescribed 3 months ago and has decided not to take it).  However (and this is important )--adding a medication here does not Link it to a diagnosis, but that's okay because you will be do it later in the Treatment section which I'm going to decribe to you

2) Assessment Section
You need to assess any problem that you assessed at the visit for which you plan to prescribe or change a medication. And for clarity, for now ,it is useful to assess all the problems for which the patient is taking a medication so you can get it linked to the diagnosis and show that you want the patient to continue it.

3) Treatment Section:
click on treatment and you will see a screen that lists the diagnoses that you have assessed. If the medications that are in the current med list have ever been linked to a diagnosis you will see them listed as you tab across the diagnoses. If you see the medication you can prescribe and/or change from this screen--click under the word  "Comments"-and a list will come up --that says start, decrease, increase etc.. click the appropriate action and the prescribing screen will appear; make your changes in this screen.

However, and for now because the meds are mostly NOT linked,  this is the usual way it goes:

 If the medication that is listed in current meds has never been linked to the diagnosis you won't see it--and you need to take one more step before you change it. You need to go to the Current med screen--and go through all the medications--linking them to a diagnosis--and clicking the C (for continue) button. You can link a med that has no diagnosis to "other" (this should be rare, but might be useful for a multivitamin).

After you have closed this screen you are back to the main treatment screen and you can make changes as reviewed  above. This is preferable to Stopping a medication --and Represcribing it at a new dose or sig-from the current med screen -because if you stop and represcribe it from the from this screen, the ongoing med list will not populate correctly and it won't be clear that you just changed a dose or sig.