I’m Kayla, a charge nurse who also helps with informatics on nights. I’ve used Sunrise Clinical Manager for a little over three years at a mid-size hospital. Med-surg, step-down, and the float pool—yep, I bounce around. I chart in it. I do orders. I check results. I hunt for printers when a discharge packet goes missing. You know what? It’s a lot. But it’s my daily tool, for better and for “why is this so many clicks?”
If you want an even deeper dive into the same roller-coaster I ride, check out my full week-by-week take on Sunrise Clinical Manager where I break down each phase in real-world detail.
If you need a quick primer before diving into my experience, here's a clear, jargon-free overview of what Sunrise Clinical Manager actually is and how hospitals deploy it.
Let me explain how it feels, not just how it works.
A Normal Night (Well, Not That Normal)
Picture a Tuesday during flu season. We had six admits in one shift. I pulled up Sunrise and used our Pneumonia Order Set. It gave me the basics fast: chest X-ray, sputum, labs, IV fluids, and the right antibiotic choices. One pop-up flagged an allergy to ceftriaxone that a transfer note missed. That alert mattered. Patient got levofloxacin instead, no drama.
An hour later, I scanned meds in the MAR. Barcode scan worked for most, but it balked at a new batch of amlodipine. The NDC didn’t match. The fix took two calls—pharmacy updated the item, then I rescanned. The MAR caught the dose change too, which saved me from giving 10 mg when 5 mg was ordered. Annoying? Yes. Worth it? Also yes.
Results Review That Actually Helps
I live in Results Review. I use the graph view to trend creatinine and potassium side by side. One night, a renal patient’s Cr crept from 1.4 to 1.9. A small rise, easy to miss in a long list. The slope on the graph made it obvious. I messaged the hospitalist right from the chart, and she held the ACE inhibitor. The next morning, the number eased back down. No big hero move—just a tool that showed me the story.
Behind those clean lab trends is a whole back-end world of Lab QMS software that keeps specimens, calibrations, and critical values flowing to us without surprises.
Flow Sheets and Notes That Don’t Make Me Cry
Flowsheets are… decent. I built a custom neuro check row set with our informatics team. Pupils. Strength. Speech. The columns snap right where we need them. It’s not pretty, but it’s fast.
Nursing notes are template-heavy. I use a “short and neat” template for falls. Another for wound care. If I’m honest, Sunrise can feel rigid. Still, I can drop a quick free-text line when the template doesn’t fit. That mix works for me.
Orders, Alerts, and the Click Parade
Order Entry is straightforward once you build Favorites. I saved a “CHF Tune-Up” list: IV Lasix, weights, BMP, daily I&O, and a gentle diuretic trickle overnight. One click and it loads. Love that.
But alerts stack up. I get the big ones—renal dosing, allergies, duplicate therapy. Keep those. The low-value alerts? They slow me down and fog my brain. We tuned a few with pharmacy and it got better, but not perfect. Fewer pings, please.
Real-Life Snags You’ll Care About
- Printing discharge summaries: sometimes it sends to the main desk printer, not the unit printer. I’ve jogged down the hall more than once, waving papers like a flag.
- Citrix lag: during day shift, it can crawl. Nights are smoother. On a busy afternoon, opening a big chart feels like walking through wet cement.
- MAR layout: the font is tiny on older screens. Zoom helps, but then you scroll more. Trade-offs.
- No dark mode: long nights, bright white screens—my eyes beg for grayscale.
- Password timer: it logs out fast if you’re pulled into a room. I get it, it’s safety. Still, I’ve re-entered my password more than I’d like.
Our facilities crew keeps chasing these printer and device mysteries with a dedicated CAFM platform that logs each fix—it beats a sticky-note trail any day.
When It Saved My Bacon
- Sepsis flags: it pinged for early sepsis on a quiet patient with a subtle temp rise and a fast heart rate. We drew labs, started fluids, and got antibiotics moving within the hour.
- Wrong patient guardrails: I once had two “Williams, J.” on my list. The banner with MRN and birth date got me to pause. I caught it before an order went on the wrong chart. My heart still thanks that banner.
Those behind-the-scenes catches are the same kind of improvements that Lenox Hill Hospital saw when they adopted Sunrise—their rollout showed tangible gains in both patient safety and clinician productivity.
Downtime at 3 A.M. (Because Of Course)
We had one downtime in spring after a patch. Sunrise moved to read-only. We went to our paper kits for a couple of hours. When it came back, the orders we wrote on paper were easy to add back in, but scanning meds felt clunky for the next day as the cache cleared. Not a meltdown, just messy. Our super-user (me, coffee in hand) did quick rounds to help folks find the new tabs that update moved.
Training New Folks
New grads learn Sunrise in about two weeks. We walk through:
- Favorites in Orders
- MAR scanning tricks (angle the scanner, check the wristband code)
- Where labs hide (Results Review, then click the tiny trend icon—yes, that one)
Once they see how to pin the patient list and set alerts to “high only,” they find their groove.
Support and Build
Our help desk knows Sunrise well. They’re slow during the day, faster at night. We built two order sets with pharmacy and a hospitalist. It took meetings, but the end result fits our unit. That’s the thing—Sunrise bends, but you need people who know how to bend it.
The Good Stuff
- Strong results trending and side-by-side labs
- Order sets that match real care
- MAR scanning that catches dose issues
- Patient banner that keeps me honest on ID
- Flowsheets you can tailor without a PhD
The Rough Edges
- Too many pop-up alerts, not all useful
- Lag with Citrix, especially on big charts
- Tricky printing and no dark mode
- Small text in MAR, lots of scrolling
- Logouts hit fast during chaos
Little Tips That Help
- Build Favorites for your top five admits (pneumonia, CHF, COPD, DKA, post-op)
- Pin your patient list and set the banner to show code status and allergies first
- Use the Results graph for kidneys and potassium together; you’ll spot trouble faster
- Save note templates for falls, wounds, and patient education
- If a scan fails in MAR, check NDC and dose; call pharmacy early, not later
Working nights can also torch your social calendar. Some colleagues joke that Sunrise is their “significant other,” while others look for creative ways to fit adult connection into an upside-down schedule. If you’ve ever wondered how people with erratic shifts navigate discreet dating spaces, an eye-opening Ashley Madison review examines the site’s privacy features, costs, and real-world success rates for busy professionals. Night-shift workers in southern Colorado who’d prefer a face-to-face option can explore local speed-dating events in Pueblo that post rotating week-night sessions, venue details, and first-timer tips so you can squeeze eight mini-dates into an evening instead of endless late-night swiping between call lights.
Final Take
Sunrise Clinical Manager isn’t shiny. It’s solid. It keeps me safe, most days fast, and sometimes fussy. When it flags a real risk, I’m grateful. When it throws three pop-ups for a simple Tylenol, I roll my eyes.
Would I use it again? Yes. For hospitals with teams who can tune order sets and trim alerts, it can be very good. For tiny clinics, it may feel heavy. If you're benchmarking Sunrise against other systems, QUSoft publishes practical vendor-comparison guides that cut through the marketing noise.
Score from this night-shift heart: 4 out of 5. It gets the job done—and when the flu hits, that matters more than pretty.