This knowledge-base article covers best practices and considerations when creating Test Patients in Pulsara.
Patient Visibility
Depending on individual user permissions and the entities included in the Test Patient channel, the Test Patient may be visible to other users within or outside of your entity.
Stopped Patients
Patient channels that are created for testing can only be stopped. They cannot be deleted once they have been created. Depending on your entity type and entity settings, once the channel is stopped the patient will remain visible for:
Hospitals
How long a stopped patient channel remains visible depends on the Hours to Display Stopped Cases setting. This setting can range from 0-72 hours.
Fire/EMS
1) For Fire/EMS-created patients with no destination selected, once the patient channel is stopped, the patient will remain on the patient list for 1 hour.
2) For Fire/EMS-created patients with a destination selected, once the patient channel is stopped, the patient will remain on the patient list for 24 hours.
3) If the patient is not stopped, either by the creating Fire/EMS (prior to door time being set) or by the receiving facility, the patient will remain active and on the patient list.
Note: Once the receiving facility sets door time, Fire/EMS cannot stop the case and the case will remain active until the facility stops the case.
Using Wristbands
If your entity is using wristbands, the wristband used during testing is able to be reused if after testing the wristband ID number is deleted from the patient channel or altered to a different value.
Note: If a wristband that was used during testing is not deleted or modified on the test patient channel, if reused, this may cause the test patient to be pulled up or create a new patient channel with a wristband ID that has already been used.
Creating The Test Patient
When creating Test Patients the following naming convention is recommended:
First Name: TEST
Last Name: Patient
As a Fire/EMS entity, to avoid sending data to live hospitals, only select the Test Hospital for your Region/State. If you have questions about which Test Hospital to use, email help@pulsara.com.
Alerting Troubleshooting
Creating Test Patients is not the recommended way to identify or test why a specific user, team, or facility was not alerted for an actual patient.
To verify if a user/device is set up correctly to receive alerts, use the test alert functionality within the platform.
On Pulsara Mobile this can be done by the user by going to My Call Status > 3 Dots in the upper right corner > Send Test Alert.
In Pulsara Manager this can be done by an admin by going to Manage Users and finding the user in question.
Then select Send Test Alert and Choose the type of alert to send.
For assistance troubleshooting why a user, team, or facility was not alerted for a specific patient, contact our support team.