Catching up when you are months behind

First: take back what the ACGME already has

If you have filed anything at all, your official case log is the most reliable record you own, and it is already written down. The Chrome extension reads your own official list, in your own browser session, and puts it into Capnolog as logged cases. That is free, and it is first for a reason. Every case it brings back is a case the rest of this will not ask you about again.

Do this before any other import. Capnolog compares everything that comes later against what you already have, so a list that overlaps your official log does not double it.

Second: find the list somebody else already made

You almost certainly do not have to type your backlog, because your hospital has been writing it down all along. The usual sources, in order of how well they work, are these. An Epic patient list printed to PDF, a schedule export from QGenda or Amion, or a CSV your department or a chief keeps. Your own notes app is the last resort.

For Epic: open the patient list you kept, Print, Save as PDF, and put it in Files. Include whatever columns you actually used. The sticky-note or comment column is worth more than anything else on the page, because it is the only place the anesthetic is written down.

Capnolog reads the file on your phone. It never connects to Epic, never asks for your hospital login, and nothing you import is uploaded.

Third: tell it what your columns mean, once

A list you did not design arrives as columns nobody labelled. They sit in a strip along the top of the review screen, above the rows they produced. Tap one and pick what it holds from your own specialty's ACGME fields. An anesthesia resident is offered ASA, anesthesia type, airway, vascular access, blocks; a neurosurgery resident is offered CPT and resident position. The rows underneath re-read as each label lands, so you are watching what the label did rather than taking it on trust. You are never asked to map your list onto a vocabulary that is not yours.

Patient name, MRN and date of birth are named in that strip like any other column, so you can recognise your own list. Tapping one shows a few of its cells. Capnolog never offers those three as a place to file a column, and they are struck out of everything that leaves the screen.

Labelling columns is free, every time, on every plan. Premium remembers the format so the same source labels itself next time.

What if one column holds four things?

Real Epic columns look like “ASA III, GA w/ ETT, video laryngoscopy, a-line” — four separate ACGME answers in one cell. Capnolog splits the cell, shows you what each piece matched, and asks you to confirm the split once rather than case by case. Anything it does not recognise is kept as your own note, not guessed at. A wrong guess about an anesthetic is a wrong case.

How much should you review in one sitting?

The reading is instant. The review is the part that takes real time, and it goes much better in months than in years. A month is short enough that you still remember the odd ones, and finishing one is the thing that makes you do the next.

Work backwards from now. The most recent month is the one you remember best and the one a program director is most likely to ask about.

What will it not do, so you can plan around it?

It will not invent what your list does not say. If the anesthetic was never written down, no importer can recover it, and Capnolog will show you the row rather than fill it in quietly. Rows it cannot read are counted and shown, never dropped — a silent three-of-thirty-four is how a backlog import loses cases.

Nothing is saved until you accept it. Every recovered case goes through the same review list, and you can change anything on it before it is logged.

Then get the backlog filed

Once the cases are in Capnolog, file them from your iPhone or with the extension on a computer. Either one fills your own official ACGME Case Log form, one case at a time, and you press Submit. Nothing is ever filed without you. Your first 50 filed cases are free, and after that, filing is Capnolog Premium; getting your cases into the app, and keeping them there, is free.

From the phone, the ACGME card on the Log tab opens the waiting cases as one batch, and you press Submit on each. Filing from the phone needs Capnolog 1.3.0 on an iPhone, in anesthesiology.