What is the stressful part of informatics?

KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN · Aug 10, 2015

I am trying to enter the system "X" time in a row. The comp is slow as usual, and every time after a minute or so I got the message of "you cannot use this application, please call your system administrator". It is 9:30 am, I have 5 patients, out of them 3 vents, 2 on drips, one total quad who seems to go south since yesterday and so is on q1 vitals. All on tele, all neex a whole lot of meds which I cannot give. So I pick up the phone.

After good 5 minutes waiting (during which I chart) I at last hear the relaxed "howcanihelpyoutoday".

- my comp is slow, I cannot enter the system, getting this message.

- I am so sorry!!!!! What is your first and last name, employee#, phone, password (SSN, day of birth, driver license, nursing license.... why do they need all that??)

- me: please do something now, I have a lot to do, thank you

- just a minute, ma'am... (seems to leave for a coffee)

Another 5 min. or so. ECG of the quad guy I am watching now looks really funny. At last, the IT guy is back.

-me: please, let me enter the system, I cannot wait any more!

- sorry, ma'am, we just encountered a systemic problem. We are working diligently to resolve it in the most optimal way. I apologize for any inconvenience...

- me: WILL YOU DO SOMETHING NOW OR NOT?? still speaking professionally... but barely so.

- as I just tried to explain you...

Code blue called in the quad room. I throw out the phone and run.

And so it goes every day. The guy in question moved from there to material maintenance because of stress. The episode above, which, according to QA, happened part because patient could not receive his antiarrythmic in time led to big, fat write up... and that was that for that particular IT specialist.

Julius Seizure · Aug 10, 2015

Its crazy that one would be written up for that. Wow. Thanks for your answer.

KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN · Aug 10, 2015

Janet496, what, in your opinion, is crazy?

I do not care, even for a second, if IT somewhere have some problem. I care for human beings who are barely holding it here. This is not a bank, Wall street or weather center, it is a hospital and we're playing with human lives. Either do your job as I do mine, or do it not and call someone who can do it, but do not try to give me customer service BS. And, yes, if a nurse cannot give patient a med because she needs to be online for that and an IT specialist cannot support connection, it is that IT specialist's fault if patient suffers. Sorry, but that's life.

BTW, if an IT specialist sees such glitches happening often and regularly, I do not see what except pure laziness might prevent him/her to let the responsible person to know about it. The situation above cost a human life at the end, and the system started to run much smoother after Q&A made a big noise about it.

ikarus01 · Aug 10, 2015

Every job has stress, right? Bedside nursing stress includes patients complaining, doctors yelling, supervisors who dont remember what its like to be on the floor.
What is the stress that comes with nursing informatics? I want to be realistic and I know that the grass always seems greener on the other side.

From an informatics perspective, one stressful situation can be "deadlines." A project has different phases, and usually, in the healthcare field, they plan projects as if nothing wrong will ever happen. Also, there is a rampant attitude that, we still have to meet the deadline, we can fix the problem after the deadline or go-live.

What does this actually mean? It means that sometimes you will have to work long days to meet deadlines, you might have to cancel plans and stay in the office because unexpected problems happened, and if you have kids, that can become a problem.

Sure, a couple of times I had situation as a nurse where I had to stay over at most 2 hours after my shift ended, but I was out by those 2 hours. I have been stuck at the office a couple of times til very late because of unforeseen problems and crazy deadlines.

Also, sometimes you have to train doctors and many of them are very uncooperative. That can be stressful, but if you have good management that backs you up, then doctors aren't that problematic, but they can be.

But for me, the biggest stress factor was being on call for all applications in a hospital, even though in my job I was only in charge of one or two applications. This meant that if any other application that was not mine called with a problem, it could get hairy really quick.

However, now it seems that hospitals have gotten smarter and they have specific teams assigned to applications, so that makes it easier, but being on call is definitely not my favorite part of the job. But again, that really depends on the employer.

But really, looking back at my informatics job, I know I had stressful days, but none of those stressful situations come close to the stressful situations I experienced as a nurse.

In fact, as a nurse I can think of some situations that happened that either left me shaking or sleepless for a couple of nights. That has never ever happened in my informatics job. EVER!

So yea, informatics might be stressful, but I would never dare compare this stress to that of what I experienced as a floor nurse. Of course, I'm comfortable with IT. I saw one nurse once just walk out of his informatics job and he said, "I've worked in ER, OR, and ICU" and this job is more stressful than that. But really, his IT skills weren't the greatest, so I can see why he felt that way.