What are they?

Using AutoHotKey, you can replace anything you type with a word, sentance, or even an entire paragraph. The trigger words don’t need to be normal words, and in fact it’s probably better if they’re not - so you don’t use them by accident.

If you want to skip straight to the code, it’s at the end.

What can they be used for?

Below are a few concrete examples of how these save me time.

Missed Call

Like many of you, we have an online patient portal. Ours is called AskMyGP, and it facilitates written communication with patients in realtime. Often I’ve tried to ring a patient but haven’t been able to get through. To save time I can simply type ‘msc.’

msc. -> 'Hello, I've had tried to call you but unfortunately couldn't reach you. I will try once more later on.

Could I do this with presets within AskMyGP? Yes, but I’d have to load the preset menu, select the one I want, and this would certainly be slower.

If I’m writing the notes, I have various options depending on whether or not I was able to leave a voicemail. The entries don’t just have to be static text, you can add datestamps or other dynamic information too.

cnr. -> Called, no answer at 9:33 AM
clm. -> Called, no answer at 9:34 AM. Left message on voicemail

Typos

Is there a word you always mispell? If you haven’t cracked it by now then maybe you’re stuck with it, but at least it doesn’t have to be visible in your documentation.

exampel -> example
dysdidothingy-> dysdiadochokinesia

Safety Netting

If you’re not using something that automatically enters safety netting information in your clinical records, you could use something basic, to simply note that you’ve safety netted, or you could go further and document specific information

snt. -> safety netted
tcb. -> to come back if no improvement or worsening
snmen. -> safety netted re: meninigits symptoms (fever/headache/drowsiness/non-blanching rash/stiff neck/photophobia) to call 999

Thoughts on Macros

I like to keep them as short as possible to save time (except when I struggle to remember what ‘code’ I’ve used in the past, and in those cases I’ll make them longer and easier to remember).

The fullstop after each helps to make sure that they aren’t triggering by accident in the middle of a word. You don’t have to do this, and in fact you can use any code you want.

Requirements

You’ll need autohotkey, I’m planning to do another article on this shortly, but if you’re confident in getting that yourself, just grab the ‘Current Version’ (not v2 Beta) from www.autohotkey.com.

How to write a hotstring

Here is an example of code that you could enter into an AutoHotKey file to replace the sequence ’tel.’ with your work telephone number (useful for filling out forms)

::tel.::
SendInput 01942 123 456
return

To break this down line by line:

  1. Surround the text you want to listen for and replace by two colons on each side ::EXAMPLE::
  2. Enter the text you want to send after the word SendInput
  3. Finish with the word ‘return’, if you don’t do this then the script will keep running and the next piece of code will be executed

If you want to read more about this, this technique is called Hotstrings in the AutoHotKey scripting language, and there is documentation here.

The Code / Script

You can see some of my current text expansions in code form on my git server. This should update as I add more.