Embracing Change. What techy stuff have you learned lately?

[Joe V]

It's been said you can't teach an old dog new tricks. That's no excuse. We all can learn something new everyday and when we stifle ourselves, we wither away. The days are gone with party lines, manual typewriters, and rotary dials. It's the age of technological advances driving the future. What techy stuff have you learned lately?

[AJJKRN]

I just said this morning that about 30% of our job involves us being IT! I unfortunately have to trouble shoot and learn something new just about every shift to get our computers or scanners to work correctly because I float all over the Med-Surg floors. Talk about wanting to just throw stuff out of the windows...if I could just figure out how to open the windows 

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

Totally agree with AJJKRN! I can't count the number of times I threatened to just take the computer out to the parking lot and run it over! Advances in technology, both hardware and software, are great in theory. Not so much when they just don't work. Not much is more frustrating than wasting time that really needs to spent on other things [like my nursing job!] sitting on a phone with tech support because some piece of hardware or software that is vital to doing my job is down.

[ontheway2crna]

One day our whole network was down and for 30 minutes we could not do one thing, and I dont think it is a good thing to rely so heavily on computers for that reason! And that was the longest 30 minutes and it does set you back quite a bit for the rest of the shift.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

AJJKRN said:

I just said this morning that about 30% of our job involves us being IT! I unfortunately have to trouble shoot and learn something new just about every shift to get our computers or scanners to work correctly because I float all over the Med-Surg floors. Talk about wanting to just throw stuff out of the windows...if I could just figure out how to open the windows 

Most are bolted shut where I work. LOL

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

One day our servers crashed. Not only could we not access patient notes, we couldnt retrieve our visit lists for the day. Many of our clients were insulin dependent diabetics as well. IN the end we managed to make the visits we could, fortunately no one got missed, that was because of the awesomeness of the nurses not anything to do with IT

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

We recently started being able to bolus pain meds from our drips/ pumps. Wonderful, right? Not having to go to PYXIS, sign out med, draw up and scan and give, waste in PYXIS. All good things.

EXCEPT the software glitch in the documentation system that makes you get a witness each and every time you bolus. Wasn't supposed to happen (except with the first bolus- to verify the dose and pump set up). SOOOOOO instead of fixing the glitch, we now have to track down a witness each and every time. Which -of course - takes even MORE time that the old way. I

[Emergent, RN]

My night charge nurse recently put together some great forms and a wonderful learning module to refer to when the computers crash. I reviewed them and know where they are kept. That was the last 'techy' thing I learned. ?