Templates are designed to capture information from a patient's visit or test. This information is collected in the terminal nodes of the template. The following screen shot is of a completed template. However, even though it is "complete", it is fully editable from the nodes to the sentences. So maybe a better description of this template is that it is operational. Notice the structure of the template, all of the small boxes are nodes. A template is an interconnected set of nodes built from the top node (parents), in this case "Soap Note", to child nodes, in this case "HPI", Chief Complaint", and others......down to all of the individual terminal nodes (child), in this case "reason", "symptom", "condition" and others.
To the right of the screen shot is one of the tree paths that is mentioned frequently in this manual. Thinking of the node structure as a path can help in the understanding of how these templates are built. Notice "Soap Note" is the parent node. "HPI' is a child of "Soap Note", however it is also the parent of "Chief Complaint". The path continues until "reason" and "symptom", these are the terminal nodes and the end of the path.
We will get to all of this shortly, but this is a good visual to keep in mind throughout this manual.
