Tag: International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council

We would like to thank everybody who attended our WRMD workshop at theCCWR 2014, California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators Symposium. Databases are not a real exciting topic, but I think we made it as interactive as we could. At this point, WRMD is well known in California and we no longer need to tell people what it about and how to use it. This workshop was used to bounce ideas off our community. We get many ideas and suggestions throughout the year from all over the world. The ideas that we think are worth exploring are taken to you. We don’t want to make any big changes unless we have some approval from our users.

Proposed Changes

Here are some of the proposals and suggestions that came out of our workshop at CCWR 2014. We plan on having similar discussions at IWRC and NWRA. We are interested in attending other state-wide organization gatherings, if anybody is are interested in having us, let us know.

• Create a way to limit required fields, allow for organizations to choose their own required fields.
• Have some confirmation after a new case# is created.
• Create a way to select “unknown” in the admissions area for unknown information.
• We need to clarify, rescuer’s observation, nature of injury and diagnosis. We want to incorporate standard terminology for the circumstances of admission. For example, most animals that come to a wildlife rehabilitator have similar issues. These animals are cat caught, dog caught, hit window, hit car, orphaned, kidnapped, electrocuted, rodenticide poisoning,  disease, etc. This list is pretty well establish, but everybody uses slightly different terms. We want change the name “Rescuer’s Observations” to “Reason for Admission”. The field will autocomplete, so when you type in “ca” cat caught will automatically populate and can be selected. You can also type in other observations as well. The autocompleted phrases will then populate to the Identity Box that appears on all tabs as “Circumstances of Admission”. What we also need to figure out is the exact meaning of “Nature of Injury” and we need to add some form of “Diagnosis” to the intake section.
• We have discovered that Holding at, Enclosure and Homecare are all talking about the same thing, “where is that animal located?”. So, we propose a new section called “Location”. Within this new box we will include “Date”, “Location/Area”, “Enclosure” and “Enclosure History”. The date is the date that the animal moved. Location/Area is a general location and would include either a volunteers name such as “Do, Jane” so that you know who has it, or it could be an area or room of the facility. For example the area could be aviaries, mammal pens, exam room, icu, baby bird room, Ward A, or however a facility is organized. This will allow for reports to be printed for specific areas. Then there is the actual Enclosure number or name, such as Bird Cage 1 or Mammal Cage 2 or whatever names are used for enclosures. Lastly there will be an Enclosure History which will include all past enclosures and the current enclosure at the top of the list. When you fill out the new enclosure information it will automatically add the new enclosure to the top of the list. We also plan to add “days in enclosure” in this section. We plan to have very strong searching ability in this section.
• Flag records. This is a very common suggestion, but we need to know what needs to be flagged and how it should be presented.
• Ability to export any report into a Word or Excel file.
• Add donation amount and have a better donor report system.
• Add in more domestic species.
• Being able to select records you want to batch update.
• Have access to approximate age of animal and a more visible, days in care.
• Change Euthanized +24hrs to Euthanize after 24hrs.

Thank you again for your thoughts and suggestions. If anybody has comments regarding these potential new changes feel free to email me at [email protected].