Epic
Ask SysNurse — Epic
Ask SysNurse — search the verified guides, fixes and answers for Epic, or ask the nurses who use it every shift.
About Epic
EHR · charting & Rover.
Part of Hospital — charting, comms, schedules & meds.
From Epic.
SysNurse never stores your work password — signing in always happens on Epic’s own official page.
Tips, guides & fixes for Epic
Epic Rover: first-shift basics
- Sign in with your own credentials and confirm you are in the right patient context before you touch anything.
- Start on your patient list — star your assigned patients so your home screen matches your assignment.
- Use the scanner for meds: scan the wristband, then the med, and wait for the confirmation before you pour or hang.
- Chart vitals and assessments as you go. A draft is invisible to the team; a signed note is what they can see.
- Check the task/activity list for overdue items first — it is your whole shift in one column.
- Log out at shared workstations when you walk away. Your login is your signature.
Fix: Epic — frozen screen
A frozen Epic screen is usually a hung session, not a dead computer — and your unsaved note is the thing worth protecting. Give it a short moment first; clicking harder mid-keystroke can make it worse.
- Wait a full 30 seconds without clicking. A busy session often catches up, and frantic clicks queue up and land all at once.
- Try one click in the chart, then press Escape. Check whether other programs respond — if the whole workstation is frozen, it is the PC, not Epic.
- If only Epic is stuck, close the Epic window and relaunch from the desktop or Citrix. Epic usually reopens your session where you left it, with drafts intact.
- Reopen your note and check for a recovered draft before retyping anything — look in your In Basket and the note list.
- Still frozen, or it keeps happening at the same workstation? Note the PC name on the monitor sticker and call the IT help desk — a pattern at one machine is their best clue.
Fix: Epic — session disconnected
Citrix and Epic sessions drop for boring reasons: a network blink, a session timeout, a workstation that went to sleep. The good news: your work usually survives on the server, not on the machine in front of you.
- Read the message before you close it. “Disconnected” means your session is still alive on the server; “signed out” means it ended.
- Reconnect from the Citrix or workspace icon and sign in again — a disconnected session should hand you back the exact screens you left.
- Check your note and orders for drafts right away, while you still remember what you were mid-sentence on.
- If drops keep happening in the same spot, note the time and the workstation name; repeated drops at one PC point to a bad network drop, which is an IT ticket, not a you problem.
- Escalate to the IT help desk if you cannot reconnect after two tries — and tell your charge nurse if it is delaying care.
Fix: Epic — chart locked by someone else
A locked chart almost always means a real person has it open somewhere — often a provider mid-note, or a workstation where someone walked away still signed in. The lock is protecting both of you from charting over each other.
- Read the lock message closely: it usually names the user and sometimes the workstation. That name is your first phone call.
- If it is your own name on another machine, go sign out there — a session you left open earlier is the classic culprit.
- Ask the other user to close the encounter when they are done. Do not ask anyone to force-break a lock on a chart they are actively writing in.
- If the owner cannot be found, your facility usually has an HIM or IT route to release a stale lock — call the help desk and let them do it through their process.
- Chart what you can elsewhere in the meantime, and tell your charge nurse if the lock is delaying time-sensitive documentation.
Fix: Epic — printer not printing labels
Most “Epic is not printing” problems are really printer problems: the job went to a different printer, the queue is jammed with someone else’s failed job, or the label stock ran out. Work from the printer backwards.
- Check the printer first: power on, labels loaded the right way up, no red error light, and the paper path clear.
- Confirm which printer your workstation is pointed at — after a swap or reboot, jobs quietly default to the wrong one. Reprint to the correct printer from the chart.
- Open the print queue on the workstation and cancel stuck or duplicate jobs, then send one fresh test label.
- If it is a jam, open it up and remove torn labels gently — leftover scraps cause the next three jams.
- Still nothing? Print from a neighboring printer so care does not wait, note the printer’s asset tag, and call IT — printing queues are theirs to clear.
Fix: Epic Rover — barcode will not scan
Rover scanning fails for simple physical reasons more often than software ones: a crumpled wristband, glare on the med wrapper, or a scanner that has quietly disconnected. Slow down — the scan is a safety step, never a step to route around.
- Flatten the wristband against the skin and hold the scanner 4–6 inches away, angled slightly so room light does not glare off the plastic.
- Wipe the scanner window and the barcode. A smudged lens reads nothing well.
- Check the scanner is awake and connected. If it beeped but nothing registered, the app may not have focus — tap back into the med field and scan again.
- Try the second barcode on the med package — many meds carry more than one, and foil corners defeat scanners.
- If a med truly will not scan, follow your facility’s manual-verification process with a second nurse per policy — never guess or borrow a scan. Tell your charge nurse and report the faulty label or scanner.
Charting phrases that hold up
Chart what you saw, did, and how the patient responded — in plain, factual language. Good charting reads like a camera, not a diary: objective findings, exact quotes when they matter, and times on everything.
- Use objective language: "patient states…" beats opinions
- Chart assessments, interventions, and the patient’s response together
- Note who you notified and when — with read-back for verbal orders
- Never chart ahead, and never chart for someone else
Fix: When the system is DOWN — downtime basics
Every system you rely on will have a down day. Downtime is a drill you already know: care continues on paper, times get written down, and recovery goes smoothly for the nurse who documented like it mattered — because it does.
- Confirm it is really down: check one other workstation or ask a neighbor, then notify your charge nurse — they own the downtime call.
- Switch to your facility’s downtime forms and downtime med records. Know where the paper lives before you need it; if you do not, ask now.
- Write times on everything: meds given, vitals, events. Recovery charting later lives or dies on those times.
- Call the IT help desk and note a ticket number if your facility uses them — and use the downtime viewer or read-only access if your facility provides one.
- When systems return, back-chart exactly what the paper says, marked as downtime entries per policy — never reconstruct from memory. Hand the paper to your charge nurse at recovery.
Fix: Workstation on wheels — will not wake
A dead WOW is usually a battery story: carts live hard lives, get unplugged by housekeeping, and quietly drain against the wall. Power first, panic never.
- Plug the cart into a wall outlet and give it two full minutes — a deeply drained cart often shows nothing at all until it sips some power.
- Check the basics: the monitor power button, the PC power button, and the cart’s own power switch or strip, which hides near the base.
- Hold the PC power button for ten seconds to force it fully off, wait ten more, then power on fresh.
- Swap to a working cart so your med pass and charting do not wait on one machine — borrow from a neighbor and trade back later.
- Tag the dead cart per your unit’s habit and tell your charge nurse; biomed or IT owns cart batteries, and an untagged dead cart just gets pushed to the next nurse.
Fix a problem on Epic
Pick what it is doing and follow the steps. Fixes here are guided, step by step — SysNurse cannot reach into your workstation, and no app should. Never type your work password anywhere except Epic’s own official sign-in, and never share patient information in a fix request.
Signing in happens on Epic’s own official page — SysNurse never stores your work password.