Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Life at Grady: E.M.aRghhhhh
A version of the following post, by Kimberly Manning, FACP, first appeared on her blog, Reflections of a Grady Doctor. Names and identifying information have been changed to protect individuals' privacy.
The good news:
Grady Hospital is "going live" on our new electronic medical record (EMR) in less than one week.
The 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 before 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 7 a.m.? Really?
Now, let me give you the visual: a six-hour session with 12 doctors sitting in front of 12 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 newfound 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:
- 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.
- The "I don't know my home keys on the typewriter so I keep getting behind so then I turn into #1" doctor.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The "What? I've been in the wrong room for the last two hours?" doctor.
- The "Sorry I'm late, but I was in the wrong room for the last two hours" doctor.
- 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.
- The "Even though all eleven others 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.
- The "All I want you to do is give me credit for being here so will ask an alarmingly off-base question that suggests that I have not paid attention to a single thing you've said for the last five trillion hours" doctor.
Labels: electronic medical records, EMR, Life at Grady
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Previous Posts
- An alarming advance in computerized monitoring
- Life at Grady: One life
- The SGR cut and hospital employment
- Making nice
- How to get docs involved with the "hospital commun...
- MGMA 2010: Two views of ICD-10
- Why comparing the performance of doctors is troubl...
- Life at Grady: One is enough
- Medical liability costs continue to rise
- Life at Grady: Wisdom from the elders
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Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
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Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
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Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care
doctor and general internist in the Division of General Internal
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CasesBlog
Ves
Dimov, MD, ACP Member, is an allergist/immunologist and Assistant
Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago,
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David
Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally
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db's
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Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP,
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DrDialogue
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Dr.
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Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal
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Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid
changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet
Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the Internal
Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery
at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her
education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient
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is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass
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Gut
Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist
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I'm
dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic
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Professor
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Just
Oncology
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MD
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Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares
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of an Internist
Justin Penn, MD, ACP Associate Member,
attended medical school at the University of Washington School of
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Rochester, where he is serving as Chief Resident.
Prescriptions
David
M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a small
community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of musings on
medicine, medical care, the health care system and medical ethics, in
no particular order.
Reflections
of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP,
reflects on the personal side of being a doctor in a community
hospital in Atlanta.
Technology
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Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP,
is interested in use of technology in education, social media and
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personal information and knowledge management.
White
Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a
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The blog, which has been around in various forms since 2007, offers
musings on the intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Other blogs of note:
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Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green
Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical
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subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
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York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program.
Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery
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Interact
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Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept
industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed
space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the
medical news of the day.
PLoS
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The Public Library of Science's open access
materials include a blog.
White
Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs
written by an emergency room physician.

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