E.M.Arrrrggghhh!

Good news:  

Grady Hospital is "going live" on our new electronic medical record (EMR) in less than one week. 

Bad news:

Well, actually. . . there's no real bad news per se. But there are some aspects of overhauling the medical record system of a ginormous hospital system that qualify as annoying, to say the least.


The main one?  The training sessions! And it's not because we don't have a wonderful team of trainers who are eagerly walking us through this electronic system. It's not them at all. It's us. The doctors. Getting us scheduled, making sure we "get it", and much, much more. There are several four to six hour training sessions that we must complete prior to the "live" date--some of which are even on weekends. It's a necessary evil for an overall positive endpoint, I know.

But Sunday at 7am? Really?

Now. .  .let me give you the visual. . . .a six hour session with twelve doctors sitting in front of twelve computers.  A very efficient teacher praising us for "getting it" so fast and agreeing to shave off an extra fifteen minutes of the session with every "good job!" compliment.  And, most importantly, a new found knowledge of our massively upgraded, generation Y charting system -- all ending nearly two hours before the intended end time of the scheduled session. That doesn't sound too horrible, right? Right.

Unless.

You get in a session with one of the following types of people:

1. The "excuse me, I didn't get that, so can you back up and repeat the last five trillion things you said over the last five trillion hours?" doctor.
2. The "I don't know my home keys on the typewriter so I keep getting behind so then I turn into #1" doctor.
3. The "jump ahead because I am too impatient to wait and learn and listen so then I get locked on some weird page that requires the instructor to stop and deal with me" doctor.
4. The "I'm so OCD that I can't get past the inaccuracies of the medical problems in your practice patient examples so I will continually correct the non-doctor instructor to insure that every example is evidence-based" doctor.
5. The "I'm going to keep checking my Blackberry/iPhone/Droid because there is no way I can go two minutes without texting an emoticon-laden message to someone sitting in this training session with me" doctor.
6. The "what? I've been in the wrong room for the last two hours?" doctor.
7. The "sorry I'm late, but I was in the wrong room for the last two hours" doctor.
8. The "I scheduled all my trainings out of order so, even though this is '102' I'm going to keep asking five trillion annoying questions because I actually haven't even done '101'" doctor.
9. The "even though all eleven other want us to keep plowing through the training so that we can get out early, I do want the offered breaks even if it means not leaving until the full six hours is up" doctor.   And last but not least,
10. The "all I want you to do is give me credit for being here so will ask an alarmingly off-based question that suggests that I have not paid attention to a single thing you've said for the last five trillion hours" doctor.

(Feel free to offer suggestions for any I may have missed. . . )

So this is what I (and all of my fellow Grady doctors) have been going through for the past several weeks. Is there a deep point to this?  Uhhh, probably not. But today, I am reflecting on how hard change can be.  It's interesting to see how set in our ways we can all be (me included.)  Change throws everything into a tailspin. Even when it's necessary.

Funny thing is when it's all over, you sit there scratching your head and trying to imagine life before/without the big change you kicked and screamed about just a few months/years before.  This will surely be no different. Oh, and for the (electronic medical) record, I refuse to admit which of the ten EMR training personalities I fit. On second thought, I've been a perfect angel, so clearly none of those apply to me. Heh.

Bottom line: This change is a good thing.

But still. I will still periodically let out my war cry:

E.M. ARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!