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what are some best practices around creating flowchart in general on clinical flow chart in
particular

the best practices when creating a flow chart include; ensure the use of design elements that are
consistent, the shapes, text and lines in the flowchart must be consistent. Every shapes should be of
the same size similar to the spaces between them. They must also be uniformly aligned and contain
same outline. Using consistency reduces unwanted distractions and ensure the workflow or data
flow is much easier to follow. Use of color is an added advantage as it make the process steps
clearer. Process like decision, making should be indicated by different color as they may be steps
which require the users to reference them severally. Spacing must also be always consistent.
Keeping everything on one page; its important to ensure the flow chart fit on a single page while
keeping the text readable. If the chart becomes too huge to fit on a single page, it's best
to break it up into many charts and integrate them together via hyperlinks.

2. Keep Everything on One Page

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To keep your flowchart to one page you can try a few solutions outlined below:
A. If it's just slightly too big, try scaling it down. Remember, though, that the font
you're using will also scale. For example, if you're using 10-point font and scale the
diagram to 60% its original size, your font is now effectively 6 point. A tip here is to
use a larger font that will offset the reduction in scale. In this example, if you re-set
your font to 16 point then a 60% scale will result in 9.6-point type. Of course, using a
larger font will probably increase the sizes of the symbols, so you may need to make
a few adjustments to get the right look.

B. Depending on the number of steps, you can also have your chart flow left to right,
then down to a subsequent line where it continues. It will look something like this:

C. Another way to handle a large flowchart is to break it up into a collection of

smaller ones. Do this by starting with a top-level diagram that provides a brief
summary of the steps in the complete process. Each of these brief summaries will
then contain a hyperlink to a separate flowchart that shows the details of that step.
The steps in the detail flowcharts may themselves be summaries of even more
detailed steps, or sub-processes. These will, in turn, be hyperlinked in the same
manner. This may continue into several layers of detail.

4. Use a Split Path Instead of a Traditional Decision Symbol

Traditional flowcharts use a diamond symbol to represent a decision. There are three
inherent problems with this:
1. A decision symbol immediately introduces two directions of information
flow, breaking the left-to-right rule and making the flowchart more difficult
to follow.
 2. Most users don't understand the meanings of various symbols, so the
introduction of a diamond shape is distracting.
3. Many creators of flowcharts are also unfamiliar with conventional symbols,
thus using them randomly and creating confusion.
The use of a split-path eliminates all three. It continues the left-to-right process flow,
and it's easy to see and understand without explanation. Here's an example showing
the same process using a split-path versus a traditional decision symbol:

what are some of the situations where creation of clinical flowchart is required

 Medical — A workflow diagram could show the stages a

patient goes through during an examination, from booking to
arriving at the hospital to receiving their results.
 Why do you need to create a flow diagram?
When designing and planning a process, flowcharts can help you identify its
essential steps and simultaneously offer the bigger picture of the process.
It organises the tasks in chronological order and identify them by type, e.g.
process, decision, data, et

How are flowcharts used in healthcare?

Flowcharts enable healthcare business operators to frame process and service
information in a simple and understandable manner. They act as aids to
comprehension; this is critical in the performance of flawless medical processes and
procedures.

What is the purpose for establishing a patient's medical chart?

Medical charts contain medically relevant events that have happened to a person. A
good medical chart will paint a clear picture of the patient. It also provides vital
information to allow healthcare practitioners to make sound decisions based on the
information contained in the record.

What is the purpose of the patient's chart?

Purpose. The purpose of a medical chart is to serve as both a medical and legal
record of an individual's clinical status, care, history, and caregiver
involvement.
When formulating a treatment process.

Clinical decision-making flow chart. This flow chart provides a simple outline of the method
which will be employed to perform an intial assessment at follow-up of whether medication
harm has occurred based on patient interview, hospital re-admission and General Practice
records. This will be followed by a final assessment of potential medication harm events,
classified by likelihood, cause, severity and preventability of the event. The binary outcome
of this assessment to determine the occurrence (or not) of medication harm will inform the
logistic regression and risk prediction model development. The model will be internally
validated and its ability to predict medicaiton harm will be compared to the ability of
discharging clinicians to predict medication harm at the point of hospital discharge

This tool's simplicity makes communicating and documenting a

process quick and clear, so that the process will more likely be
understood and applied correctly and consistently. It can also help
you to estimate the timescale of the process, as you're better able to
gauge the time needed for each task along the way. And you'll more
likely identify who you should involve and at what stage, such as
senior management or a compliance authority.
But you can also benefit from the process of creating a flow chart
itself, as you build it step by step. You'll be able to focus on the detail
of each individual stage, without feeling overwhelmed by the rest of
the process, and then "zoom out" again to see the wider picture.