exciting time in eCare

today my hospital went live with the system i was hired to train nurses for. so like a mother sending of her baby to college for the first time after years of nurturing them from when it was a baby, i was anxious in anticipation. i expected the worse - only because i have never seen so much "pathetic" computer users in my life (and there are a lot of them in nursing believe it or not)! but the day went smoother than i imagined.

i mean, it was not an easy job. i had to support a whole floor together with 2 educators. i had to deal with negative nancy's... nurses who were cussing & threatening to forget what they learned and do paper chart when (what i considered) minor glitches occurred even for a short period of time. i had one coming close to tears because of her frustration. i had one practically yelling at me because she thinks the system is so stupid... someone exclaiming that they have to stay in overtime just because of this. doomsday-like predictions stemming from frustrations were heard the 1st 4 hours of going live. (don't mean to self-flagellate, but the users i trained were the calmest nurses i've seen on the floor while the ones i did not train seem to be the neurotic bunch!)

but at the end of the day, nobody went into overtime... nobody had a nervous breakdown... almost everybody had a smile in their faces & were able to finish their job before the end of their shifts. it was alright after all. despite the huge learning curve (plus the foreseen/ unforeseen glitches in the software) that resulted from this ambitious undertaking, positive results came out of it, and it IS clearly evident right off the get-go - workload is now actually lighter for the nurses! i feel proud that i was a part of this transition. it is a fabulous feeling. 

i think i've found my calling. might be leaving bedside nursing forever. hello nursing informatics (well, we'll see....)