I began working on a retrospective trial at my institution with some colleagues. Much of the data was retrieved for us by an IT team, but there still exists a plethora of information that we have to pull chart by painful chart.
Working in an oncology subspecialty, we treat a fair number of old and young patients, many with poor outcomes. As I scraped through about 100 charts, extracting bits of information from each, a number of patients were deceased.
On Epic, when you open the chart of a deceased patient, it asks if you're sure you want to go into a dead patient's chart. Yes, I'm sure. As another reminder of their passing, the patient photograph that sits in the left upper hand portion of the chart - typically a not great photo of their face, though occasionally someone is smiling brightly, and a couple patients even had their dogs with them in the photo (did they bring them to clinic? upload the photo manually from home?) - is turned a dark shade of grey. Whose idea was this, to turn the photos grey? Maybe it helps prevent us from trying to order follow up labs on the dead. It's a bit haunting, whatever purpose it serves.
I click through the chart. Check for the information I need, make a note in excel, then close the chart out. Many are still living. A significant amount are dead. Some of the dead would be beyond 80 by now (as I look them up, I have to enter their date of birth). Fine, they likely lived a full life. Some would have been about my age, had they lived til today. Others, still, are much younger, and died well before they were able to experience much of a real, adult life.
One by one I go through them, filing away what I need in excel, closing out the charts. The charts of ghosts.