What should you do first to save changes to a patient’s record?

To ensure that changes made to a patient's record are preserved, the first action you should take is to click on the save button. This action is critical because clicking the save button directly instructs the system to commit any alterations you have made to the record into the database. Until this step is taken, any modifications are typically held in a temporary state and may be lost if you navigate away from the page or close the window.

Closing the window, printing the record, or logging out of the system do not fulfill this primary need to save changes. Closing the window would abandon any unsaved work; printing would only provide a hard copy of the current view, while logging out would end your session without securing the updates made. Therefore, ensuring the record is saved before performing any other actions is essential for maintaining accurate and up-to-date patient information.