the.com/nursing kardex
a patient's entire hospital existence, condensed onto one card you can flip through in seconds.
means a compact, at-a-glance reference summarizing a patient's diagnosis, orders, meds, and care needs for quick handoff between nurses.
from named after the kardex cabinet, a rotary card-filing system invented by rand kardex in the early 1900s for tracking business inventory, which hospitals adopted mid-century to track patients the same way they tracked stock.
original formatliteral flip cards in a rotating metal cabinet
nowmostly digital, embedded in ehr systems
purposebuilt for speed, not legal documentation
shift changeread first, before touching a patient
for instance
epic care summary — digital kardex-style view used in most us hospitals since 2010s
paper kardex cart — still used in some rural and older facilities today
cerner powerchart snapshot — ehr equivalent nurses check before rounds