"Why haven't you printed off a patient census for tonight?"
"We don't need it."
"We do. Or how can we see which patients are still here." At one click of a mouse, I illuminated the screen.
"There they are. All tucked up for the night."
"But you have to print it out." Wait for it. "It's your job."
"What? Wasting paper?" Unphased by my reply, she went back on the offensive.
"Well, you didn't print one last night and someone wasn't discharged. That was your fault."
"It was my day off." Legend wills it to be my fault because she'd told everyone on four floors of my mistake before I arrived that morning.
And so began The UnwinnableWar between 21st century technology and those who want to carry on doing exactly what they've been failing to achieve in previous decades. Take one consultant's secretary who'd flatly refused to do her training modules on the new system until she returned from holiday on the go-live day. Imagine her face when she discovered her man's patients hadn't been given time slots and fighting back the crocodile tears, she demanded the assistance of a Super User to administer personal tuition. After about an hour, she was in real tears and told the SU in the surly manner of a Gatwick baggage handler,
"Don't you dare treat me like a child!" Sadly, the secretary had underestimated the strength of the SU's character which had been honed on the playing fields of Everton.
"Well stop acting like one." One nil to the geeks.
One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting on Mum's knee watching Emergency Ward 10 in black and white, on a foot-square tele. All that starched cotton and heavy breathing put me right off any ideas of being a nurse and to this day, I rejoice in my choices. And imagine my horror in confronting the Careers Woman in my teens at a special advisory session. She wore a Crimplene frock which must have itched [I remember Dad using the stuff to clean knitting machines] but so did my school blazer. I was interrogated thus,
"How about nursing?"
"What about it?"
"We're short of nurses and you'd be good at it." How did she know? I had top grades in all three sciences and wanted to be an astronaut. Forget maths though, I'm rubbish without a spreadsheet.
"No. I don't want to clean up after people thank you. I'd rather be doctor." She shook her head but the perm didn't move.
"Doctor?" She had an answer for everything. "You'd have to go away from home for a long time. Your parents wouldn't like that, would they?"
"You didn't give that old guff to my cousin."
"But he's a boy and academic." What does that make me then? "Now how about a nice secretarial course? We're short of secretaries and you'd be good at it."
And so began my Unwinnable War between the brains I possess and what other people will let me do with them. And this week, I hiding my knowledge of the SAP system behind a veil of ignorance.
Tip of the Blog: With thanks to Stargate SG-1 for the title of today's post. I'd heard a god-like person admonish another with the promise of death because they "failed to win the unwinnable war". Welcome to my world.
Raven
In Greek mythology, Prometheus, the Titan, is credited with the creation of man from clay and the theft of fire for human use, an act that apparently has enabled progress and civilization. As punishment for the theft, Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, sentenced him to eternal torment. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each day an eagle (not, note, a Raven) was sent to feed on his liver, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day. I leave you to judge if Prometheus is a suitable, or perhaps prescient, name for a computer system in a hospital. By sheer coincidence, I’m having liver and onions for supper tonight.
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