Programmers Under the Gun
(Lacking a picture of a gun aimed at a programmer, I used one of a cat instead. Just pretend that the cat is a programmer.)
My hospital took a perfectly good medical administration record(MAR) system and broke it. (Mars are how we keep track of the patients medications.) The old one worked fine. I'm a big believer in the saying, "If it ain't broke don't fix it."So, now instead of a system that works, we have a broken one.
The new system was premiered tonight on my shift. Besides being nearly incomprehensible, it was filled with major mistakes. I spent most of the night looking for errors and correcting them to make sure that patients got the meds that the doctors ordered.
If they don't fix the programming by Monday morning, I don't know what we'll do. It was quiet enough that I had the luxury of time to fix errors and handwrite the orders. On Monday when we're swamped with patients and don't have time for such foolishness, we could be in trouble. The programmers have only 30 hours left to fix the problems (or else).
Written by Melissa on 12:25 AM
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Melissa blogging from sunny Santa Clarita, Southern California, United States.
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5 Comments:
OMG! I remember the MAR system and it worked better than what I saw at any other hospital. The orders were clear and easy interpret. FYI the charting sytem you have is better too. The checkoffs are so much faster than having to do extensive narrative.
Now each drug entry on the MAR is a couple of paragraphs long. Even if they get it right, which now they're not, who has time to read through all of that fluff to get to the 5 or 6 things that we need? Even a routine postop patient has 8 to 10 pages in the MAR now.
They better not change the charting. With the current system, I can chart each patient in less than a minute.
I would threaten to quit if they change the charting and don't correct the MAR. If you think that's bad, when I worked in CCU we would have to check vitals and do assessments and chart at least every hr and some every 15 mins, and it was only partially checkoff. The charting was a nightmare! If it was a fresh cardiac procedure and we had to recover them you have 2 or more nurses plus maybe a doc or 2 and you just stand there and adjust the drips and check the pressure in the lines to keep the vitals stable. I hated that job, you really had to be sober all the time:) (Just Kidding).
My apologies, this must bore the crap out of everyone but the nurses, well and to us it's just another day so I guess that's boring too. Lets go back to talking about dogs:)!
No wait..I have one more funny. My ex husband once complained to me about the stress at his job! OK yes he sometimes works long and hard hours, but he flies all over the world (1st class), eats at great restaurants every night and stays at great hotels all on their dime. He does something with the computers and the TV satellites at the big networks all over the world (ok, I don't really understand what he does, but I just got a free Sony Vaio laptop out of it because it was a couple months old so it was outdated!). Anyway, he told me "You don't understand! If I screw up at work millions of people will lose their TV reception!" I've never heard of anyone dying from that...have you?
I think that some people would rather be dead than lose their TV reception. :)
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