Scan a paper brain sheet

What you’ll do

Take a photo of a paper brain sheet you’ve already filled out at the start of shift, and Synapse reads the fields off the page into the app. Patient initials, beds, vitals slots, drips, meds. Pulled off the page into patient records you can edit.

Why nurses use this

You took report on paper because the off-going nurse runs paper. Half your assignment is on a sheet in your hand. Retyping all of it into the app means committing ten to fifteen minutes you don’t have. Brain Sheet Scan is the meet-paper-where-it-is path: snap a photo, let Synapse pull what it can, edit what it got wrong, move on.

How to get there

• From the Template Picker (/sheets): tap the “Scan Brain Sheet” action.
• From the Builder (/builder): same action surfaces in the menu when an active sheet is open.

Step-by-step

1. Open Scan Brain Sheet. From the Template Picker or Builder, tap the Scan action. A camera viewfinder opens inside a modal.

2. Frame the sheet. Lay the sheet flat, get the whole page in frame, avoid shadows across the boxes. Single-page sheets only. Fold a 2-pager flat.

3. Capture. Synapse reads the page and matches the text to the fields it knows: vitals, patient header, meds. A progress bar runs while it works.

4. Review what Synapse found. Synapse shows you the fields it pulled from the page. Fields it’s sure about are filled in cleanly. Fields it wasn’t sure about are highlighted so you can double-check them.

5. Fix what’s wrong. Tap any field to edit. Common issues: handwriting read as the wrong letter (“B” as “8”), a vitals value read out of order, an initial dropped. Editing works the same as the SBAR form.

6. Save. The parsed patients land on your deck. Notes (if you wrote a section) attach to the right patient. The sheet image itself is stored against the records.

Tips from the floor

• Print is easier to scan than handwriting. If you can print the blank and write tidily in the boxes, you’ll get near-perfect extraction. Long scribbles in the notes column are the hardest for the parser.
• One sheet per scan. Don’t try to scan two pages at once. The field-mapping assumes one sheet = one layout.
• Direct overhead light, not the fluorescent strip behind you. The shadow of your phone over the sheet is the top reason scans go wrong. Stand to the side.
• You’ll still review every field. Treat the scan output as a starting draft, not a final import. The time savings is in not retyping the 80% the parser gets right. Verifying is fast.
• The brain sheet template should match the print layout. If you scan a sheet that doesn’t match a layout Synapse knows, it does its best and you’ll spend more time fixing. Build the template, print it, fill it, scan it.

Common questions

What formats does this work with? The system templates that Synapse ships, plus any custom template you’ve built and printed. Any sheet that came from the Brain Sheet Builder scans best because the layout is known.

Can I scan a hospital-issued sheet I didn’t make? Best-effort. The parser will pull what it can identify (the obvious fields, patient header, vitals if labeled clearly), but unrecognized sections become free-text notes. You’ll do more cleanup.

Is the photo stored? Yes, against the records it created. Treat it like PHI. Same access rules.

What if I scan the wrong sheet? Cancel before Save. If you’ve already saved, deleting the patients created from the scan also removes the attached sheet image.

Is scan offline-capable? No. Synapse needs an internet connection to read the page. Low-signal floors mean slow or no scans.

Where this fits in your shift

Brain Sheet Scan is the “I came to Synapse mid-shift with paper in hand” entrance. For nurses already in the app, adding a patient is the usual path. For nurse-to-nurse handoff of patients already in Synapse, QR handoff is faster. Scan is the bridge from paper.