Computer Training On My Day Off! Oh Goodie!!

 

I may change my stance on euthanasia before the end of the day.

UPDATE: Survived without killing the trainers. Barely.

And it was a gigantic waste of time, as they were showing the software on a too-blurry-to-read projector screen, and the actual software installed for training was on a laptop too small to see the actual working screen, which also lacked the same functions, so I literally could have watched a YouTube podcast at home, in my pajamas, and learned more in 20 minutes' time, than I did wasting most of a day going to this training session. People who do flight training at home with Microsoft Flight Simulator and self-purchased controls are miles ahead of this bargain-basement approach to "training".

There are two absolute truths about EMRs (Electronic Medical Records):

1) Everyone in the medical field is certain that their version of EMR is the worst one ever inflicted on mortal man.

2) They are all correct.

So, in a few weeks, we will switch from the old kludgy, klunky p.o.s., to a shiny new electronic total p.o.s. (apparently on the theory that a steaming fresh turd is better than an old dried out one), and patient care will slow to a crawl for days to weeks while we find out all the things the IT bozos didn't think of that crash it, total chaos and panic will ensue, a blue cloud of profanity will form over the hospital system's various branches, and then we'll settle down to our newest p.o.s., and slowly beat it into submission. We hope.

Every month they will go back to paper charting (always on the night shift) for several hours, while IT finds all the old bugs in the software, kills them, and installs new ones at a 2:1 ratio, slowing the system's responses even further, which will be followed by "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." for several more years, as we try mightily not to kill someone because of a charting problem that we complained about pointlessly for years, whereupon some huckster will sell the corporation a brand new total p.o.s. that still f**ks everything up sideways, with a rusty chainsaw. And never, not once, just as in all of recorded medical history, will anyone involved in programming ask so much as a single doctor, nurse, tech, or clerical weenie for as little as a single word of advice or request on the next p.o.s. they install, and the software abortions will continue, world without end, amen.

{Somebody could literally have thrown $20M at Bill Gates one time, and said "Make us a better medical charting mousetrap." And he would have farmed it out to people less stupid than the current nationwide crop of @$$holes, and he would have gotten it done. But it would have suckage points, and would be improved, year by year, and in a few years, every hospital in the country would use it, it would have metric fucktons of outside add-ons and tech support, and it would be the equivalent of Google, YouTube, Amazon, or Twitter. He'd have another billion dollars, and no one anywhere would have to waste time re-inventing the wheel every couple of years, forever. But where's the fun in that, right?}

Thanks to Obozo and his dipshit minions at HHS, everyone has now spent literal billions on these fucktarded craptastic disasterpieces, which interfere with patient care, slow delivery of it, and force all actual practitioners to spend 2 hours treating the computer program for every 20 minutes they spend on actual patient care. At this rate, a new nurse now will only be able to treat 2-3 patients a shift by the time they retire, and need a master's degree in computer science to do their jobs, the exact opposite of the UPS clipboard that they can and do teach high school dropouts how to use in a couple of hours.

Back in the day, I noted that UPS tracked a $5 package with a $5,000 clipboard, while we took care of $50,000 patients with 50¢ worth of paper and pen. That was absolutely backwards.

The promise of EMRs was that they would be portable, accessible, and compatible. The reality is that they are an abomination, less secure than hiding the patient's medical records under their pillowcase, none of them talk to each other, and patients in Turd World countries where pen and paper charting is the norm get better hands-on care than patients anywhere a computer chart is in use.

But we moved from 18th century charting to the space-age all right. With programs from the 1960s, during the Apollo era. Totally not kidding about that. It's a wonder the software wasn't mailed to us on 8" floppies or magnetic tape reels. (Actually, for all I know, that's exactly how it was sent.) A dozen years later, it's only gotten worse, every single time a change is made.

Thank your congressweasels and the illegal alien Kenyan.

There is nothing whatsoever on the entire planet in all of world history that government cannot royally fuck up simply by looking at it or touching it.