Hectic Couple of Weeks!

These last 2 weeks have been exhausting!  The hospital I work for has undergone one of the biggest (if not the biggest) changes in its history.  We transitioned from paper charts to electronic charts.  I have worked with electronic records before, but I have never been apart of the switch from paper to computer.  For the most part, the switch was a smooth one.  The system never crashed, and patients have been fairly understanding as we muddle along reading a computer screen.  To try and aide the transition we significantly reduced the number of patients we see in one day.  With our old paper system we saw patients in 20 minute appointment slots with three overbooks allowed.  This gave us a grand total of about 16-18 patients each provider a day.  Currently with the new electronic system we see patients in 40 minute appointment slots and no overbooks.  This gives us a grand total of only 8-9 patients per provider a day!  Despite the dramatic decrease in number of patients seen each day, we have all been exhausted with learning each little crevice of this new system (and trust me, there are thousands of little crevices to learn).  Each night I go home feeling more tired than I ever felt seeing twice the number of patients I currently see.  I usually go to bed shortly after the kids go down.  When I wake up the next morning I can remember all the strange dreams I had that night!  I don't know if that means I am sleeping harder or softer. 
One of the most exciting and frustrating parts of doing everything electronic is the radio medical traffic.  I've written about RMT before.  It's where the village clinics send the Bethel based provider an account of a patient they just saw and request a plan for this patient.  What's nice about the electronic system is that when a patient comes in from a village, I can see what was already done.  Before with the paper system, the patient's village chart was separate from their Bethel chart.  Ideally, information got sent back and forth, but this was rarely the reality.  Now it's all one chart!  The frustrating part is that computers rely on electricity, and electricity is very fickle in the villages.  Our email inboxes are ever flowing with up-dates on which village is currently down and reverting back to the old paper system. 
All in all its a good change.  No more misinterpreting something because of bad handwriting.  No more searching for paper notes you know should be in the chart.  No more searching for whole charts!  With time I will hopefully get faster and feel less exhausted by the end of the day.  Who knows, maybe soon I will be able to stay up past 8:30!