Dictation: talk instead of type

What you’ll do

Open Dictate Patient, talk for a few seconds, and Synapse turns your speech into a structured patient record. The whole admit, parsed into the form fields, ready to review and save.

Why nurses use this

The off-going nurse just gave you four sentences of report on a new admit. Typing those four sentences into twelve form fields takes 2–3 minutes. Saying them out loud takes 30 seconds. Dictation isn’t there to replace typing. It’s there for the moments where typing slows you down enough that you skip the form entirely and tell yourself you’ll fill it in later. (You won’t.)

How to get there

Two entry points, same flow.

• Patients chip menu: single tap the active Patients chip → “Dictate patient.”
• The floating mic button: the dictation action on the dashboard’s floating button gets you to the same dialog.

Dictate Patient is currently English-only.

Step-by-step

1. Open Dictate Patient. From the Patients chip menu or the floating mic. A dictation dialog opens and starts listening.

2. Speak the patient. “Bed 4, 72-year-old male, chest pain admit overnight, troponin pending, allergies penicillin.” Synapse builds a transcript as you speak.

3. Stop when you’re done. A silence timer auto-stops; tap the mic if you want to stop sooner. Cancel discards the take with no save.

4. Review the filled fields. Synapse shows you the patient form with the fields it filled in. Bed, age, sex, complaint, allergies. Edit any field that didn’t land right.

5. Save. Patient on the front of the deck.

Tips from the floor

• There’s a usage meter. Dictation comes with a monthly allowance, and the dictation dialog shows your remaining minutes. Most nurses never get close; heavy users will see it count down.
• Pauses are okay. Synapse won’t cut you off the moment you breathe. The silence timer is tuned for natural speech, not radio chatter.
• Cancel is your friend. If you misspeak halfway through a long take, cancel and restart. No half-saved record.
• Dictate where it’s quiet enough that you’d take a phone call. Med rooms and the nurse’s station usually work. Rooms full of monitor alarms, hallways during shift change, and anywhere near suction or a HEPA cart will tank your accuracy.
• Do a demo patient first. “Bed 4, 72yo M, chest pain admit.” One practice run and you’ll trust it with a real admit.

Common questions

What’s the difference between Dictation and voice mode in the Brain? Direction. Dictation is one-way: you speak, Synapse turns it into a patient record, and that’s it. The Brain’s voice mode is a real back-and-forth. It talks back, asks clarifying questions, and confirms before it changes anything. Use dictation to capture an admit fast. Use the Brain when you want to have a conversation.

Why is Dictate Patient English-only right now? It only understands English well right now. More languages are coming.

Does dictation work without the internet? No. Synapse needs an internet connection to understand your voice. On a low-signal floor, expect it to be slow or unavailable. The typed form always works, signal or not.

Can I dictate a note instead of a patient? Use the Brain for that: ask it to draft or save a note from what you tell it. See the Brain assistant. On Apple Watch, the voice tab routes what you say to the Brain too.

Are my dictations stored? The structured record you save is yours, like anything else you put in Synapse. For how voice data is handled, see the privacy policy.

Where this fits in your shift

Dictation is what makes adding a patient take 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes. For the bigger jobs (drafting notes, summarizing patients, asking clinical questions), see the Brain.