19 Cerner Keyboard Shortcuts

Cerner is a renowned EHR system known for its comprehensive features and ability to optimize patient care workflows. The platform helps healthcare providers with patient management by streamlining clinical documentation, order entry, scheduling, and billing. 

While many users are familiar with Cerner’s key capabilities, numerous lesser-known options make workflows more efficient. These lesser-known capabilities are Cerner’s shortcuts. They enable faster navigation, reduce repetitive data entry, and help alleviate administrative burdens. 

In this article, we present some of the unique keyboard shortcuts available in Cerner. Mastering these shortcuts can help reduce administrative woes and allow providers to focus more on care delivery.

Chart Abstracting Shortcuts

• Select an activated button – ENTER
• Cut – CTRL+X
• Move to the next box – TAB
• Associate codes – CTRL+M followed by ALT+A
• Paste – CTRL+V

Coding Task Shortcuts

• Move to the Coding Task Queue – CTRL+Q
• Send to abstracting – CTRL+A
• Send to an encoder – CTRL+E
• Upstream coding – CTRL+U
• Move to the next task – CTRL+N

Chart Review Tips

• Reviewing the whole chart quickly: The standard way to look at charts is the “Clinical Notes” display. However, adjusting your view using the “PowerNote” display makes viewing the chart much faster.
  • In the PowerNote tab, change the display to Only, then Note Type
  • This loads the whole chart in an organized hierarchy
    • Note: If your patient is older than 2 years, select “View All” at the very bottom of the 3rd drop-down list to load all older data
• Reviewing Flowsheet data quickly by eliminating scrolling: Adjusting how data in the flowsheet is displayed can save time and increase your flowsheet’s organization.
  • Use Group View instead of Table View.
  • This allows you to eliminate the need to scroll horizontally. You just have to scroll vertically.
• Pinning Dropdown Menus: Pinning dropdown menus allows you to open different tabs without a dropdown menu disappearing quickly.
  • When using a dropdown menu, use the “Pin” icon to keep the menu open when you are doing other tasks in Cerner.   
• Changing the Search Criteria in E-Mar: Being able to search tabs easily can help you save time. You can search with a specific date or time range to easily find the medications a patient received.
  • Simply go to the E-Mar menu and right-click the gray bar at the top of the page. Then, select “Change Search Criteria.”

Documentation Tips

• Copying/Pasting Data from Flowsheet: Being able to copy and paste from a flowsheet easily makes documentation tasks easier to track.
  • LIST view in Flowsheet and change to text (Options → List View → Text View)
    • Formats the data so that you can copy and paste it anywhere 
• Writing on a “blank sheet of paper”: Sometimes, all you need for documentation is a simple, blank sheet to write something down quickly. Instead of opening another application and wasting time, All PowerNotes contain the “blank sheet of paper” ability.
  • Click on the “Click to Display Contributor View” button in the upper right-hand corner and just start typing
  • Use the toolbar along the top of the note to add templates and auto-text
• Documents Mpage Component: Unlike Clinical Notes, this workflow component allows you to review a patient’s documents while also drafting notes. The features include:
  • Filtering: This improves ease when looking for documents
  • Sorting: This categorizes your documents based on the preferences you select 
  • Continuous scrolling: This allows you to navigate from document to document without closing or leaving your selected window. This eliminates the time it takes the windows to load, saving you time on chart review and documentation.
• Set up split screen documentation with Contextual View: Splitting the view into Contextual View simultaneously creates notes and reviews patient documentation. It also helps decrease scrolling and enables you to drag and drop documentation from previous notes. With this, you can:
  1. Drag free-text components to the bottom.
  2. Move free-text components to the right side of view.
     • Note: On a laptop where the screen resolution may not support Contextual View, CTRL – and + change the resolution to apply the desired view settings. 
• Tagging: Tagging lab results or blocks of text can make creating notes and reports easier and faster.
  • To tag a block of text, select the text and click the “Tag” button that comes up. You can also simply drag and drop the text into the desired location to automatically use a tag.
  • You can also tag a selected lab result by clicking the “Tag” button at the top of the result tab, which opens when you expand the lab result. 

Accelerate Workflows with TextExpander

Cerner users can further accelerate their workflows with TextExpander. This software allows users to create personalized shortcuts for frequently used phrases, medical terminology, and patient instructions. When used with Cerner, these shortcuts further streamline the documentation process, enabling quick and accurate data entry. Instead of typing out lengthy and repetitive text, providers can type a short abbreviation, and TextExpander will automatically expand it to the full text.

By using TextExpander along with Cerner, healthcare providers can significantly enhance their productivity, minimize errors, and make the most of their EHR’s powerful capabilities.