A note written by someone with the Trainee role is marked by Heltio as Pending countersign and is not treated as final documentation until a supervisor approves it. The Countersign queue is the list of all such notes at the facility.
The requirement follows from the author's role at the moment of writing, not from the content of the note — the role description says so outright: Documents care; notes require countersign before finalisation. Changing the author's role later does not retroactively approve notes already waiting.
How to do it
Open the queue
In the side menu: Hospital → Countersign queue. The entry appears only to people entitled to countersign, and carries a counter when notes are waiting. The screen header says: Review and approve pending trainee notes.
Look through the list
The table has the columns Author, Patient, Type, Date, View and Actions, sorted newest first. Next to the author sits a Trainee note marker. The View column shows the beginning of the content, and the patient's name is a link to the patient record. The list is paginated at 20 entries.
An empty queue is Nothing to countersign — and that is the desired state, not an error.
Approve a note
The Countersign button opens the Countersign note dialog with a preview: the note type, the author, the date and the beginning of the content. The dialog warns: You are about to countersign this note, making it final clinical documentation. This action cannot be undone.
You confirm with Countersign; Heltio acknowledges with Note countersigned and takes the entry off the queue.
Check a note's state outside the queue
A note carries its state on the patient record and on the timeline too: Pending countersign before approval, and after it Countersigned by together with a name and a date. You do not have to come back to the queue to check.
What countersigning changes
- The note stops being a supervised draft and becomes final documentation.
- The action goes into the audit log together with who approved it and when.
- The approval cannot be undone or repeated — a second attempt is refused.
When something goes wrong
You cannot countersign your own note
What this means: The note was written by the same person who is trying to approve it. A countersignature is by definition a second pair of eyes, so no permission gets around it.
This note is already countersigned
What this means: Somebody approved this note in the meantime — or the click went through twice.
Available for hospital facilities
What this means: The queue works only at facilities of type Hospital. At other practices the screen is visible but greyed out, with a **Hospital feature** banner.
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What this means: The list did not load.
Who has access
Clinic Admin PractitionerFour roles can countersign: Owner, Admin, Coordinator and Senior therapist. The role descriptions say so outright — a coordinator is a Department head — manages structure & teams, may countersign notes, and a senior therapist is a Supervising therapist — countersigns notes, plans treatment series.
Someone with the Trainee role may write notes but does not see the queue and approves nothing — not even other people's notes. If an otherwise entitled person opens the screen at a hospital facility without that right, they see a message instead of the table.
In the mobile app the queue is called To countersign and works the same way, with one limitation: Countersigning is only available when online.
Related
- Clinical notes — how a note is written and what closes it.
- Inpatient stay — the rest of the work on a ward.
- Roles and permissions — the full set of roles, hospital ones included.
Related features
Inpatient stay — admission, leave, discharge
The record of a patient's hospitalization on a ward: admission with a diagnosis and a bed, leave, transfer between wards, discharge and the Barthel scale.
Clinical notes, signing and amendments
Four note formats, practice templates, the 48-hour edit window, and the signature that closes an entry for good — with the amendment as the only route to changing it.
Roles and permissions
Thirteen roles: four in an ordinary clinic, eight more in a hospital facility and one on the patient side. What each one sees, what it can change, and why a role cannot be overridden with a single permission.