The Computer Beast

Paul's CERNER drawing

So yesterday was our first day of computer charting at the hospital.  We have been told that this new type of charting is going to make our lives easier, and we will be joining other health care professionals in the 21st century.  I however, am old school.  I did NOT want this at all.
When I was in high school, my dear mother, doll lady,  MADE me take typing.  I was not at all happy with the fact that I was going to have to give up one of my electives to take this class.  And besides, why in the world did I need typing? I was not going to be a secretary for a living.  Nevertheless, I enrolled for the class in my  junior year.  We learned on "old school" typewriters.  The kind that ding when you get to the end of the page, and need to stop and move the bar thingy to the next line.  There was no such thing as spell check, grammar check, or backspace that erased your last letter.  You had to use your little bottle of liquid paper, and place it over your mistake, then wait and blow on it until it dried.  It was rather annoying, but I have to say, we learned to be precise typists and make little errors.
My senior year I went on to take Word Processing.  It was my computer literacy course.  You see, back in those days, not everyone owned a computer, and computer literacy courses were out there to make sure high school graduates were getting some type of computer exposure.  My word processing class was on a computer that was a black screen with a little flashing green light.  We learned things like "open apple C and closed apple U."  These type of things like pressing the open apple key and the U key would underline the text.  There were hundreds of commands that had to be memorized in order to be able to use the system.  It took the entire year, two semesters, to learn the system.
Two months ago, we got trained for two days on this new computer system for work.  I know I am not the oldest that was in the class, but I sure do feel very computer stupid compared to my other co-workers, who could not imagine having the computer background I have.  The intranet was not even around when I was in high school, or at least we never had access to it.  Floppy disks really WERE floppy.  So sitting in the training, I sat there trying to keep up, and feeling like, "holy cow, what in the world am I going to do in two months when this system goes LIVE?"  We finished the class after two days, and all I could think was, "they did not teach us enough!"  So, I have had a little count down going on in my head since February dreading the days until we changed to the computer system.  I specifically asked for the first day of launch, to be OFF from work.  Wouldn't you know that not only did they change the date that it would start, but now, not only was I working, I was also in charge!  I thought I was going to cry when I was getting report in the morning.  I hate feeling out of control in situations and feeling like I don't have a clue what is going on.  What is worse, I hate feeling stupid in front of other people, especially doctors.  At least yesterday, I was not the only one feeling that way.  I looked around, and even the most computer savvy of my friends, my precious "BFF the NP", had that "deer in the headlights" look.  I thought, "oh, if BFF the NP is lost, I am going to be REALLY lost."  But it was comforting that I was not the only one feeling like the bottom had just dropped out beneath us.
So there I was, starring at it, THE COMPUTER BEAST!  And yes, a beast it is!  I didn't even like the way the cart it was sitting on looked.  It seemed to be laughing at me as I was trying to figure out how to manuvuer my way around the system.  User friendly it was none the such.  Of course the person who designed the system could NOT have been a nurse.  They made it far too difficult.  Click here, but you have to right click here, and this tab doesn't do what you think it should, and things are hidden, and the help tab is just a joke!  I did my best, managed to keep from crying several times durning the day, and finished thinking, "oh I hope I didn't miss anything."  The important thing was, all my patients were taken care of, safe and sound, all alive, and there for the next shift.
My nemesis the BEAST will be there next time I know.  And I guess I will have to give him the points for winning the first battle.  But as my hubby would say in the funniest creole voice, "you live to fight another day."