Saturday, August 24, 2013

Chicken Little Bang Bang Bang

In order to create more jobs and provide less patient care, the Medical Center has decided that all orders will be done through the Computerized Patient Oder Entry "CPOE" or F+++ing Piece of S""" "FPOS" system.  As a side note, the medical center also has posted signs saying that "carrying of handguns in this facility is prohibited" to keep the staff from shooting the computers.  Anyway, when you go to order a medication the FPOS doesn't let you order it without giving you at least a dozen warnings that you have to go through and mark "seen and approved", or "noted", or something.  Of course all the warnings are the legalese, mumbo jumbo ones that have no bearing on what you are actually doing.  One of my favorites is "insulin has been shown to decrease levels of blood glucose".  Ive looked, when you try to get rid of the warning there is no "No Sh@@" button.  As you can imagine, after fighting this for a while you go out of your way to find someone else to do it for you.  I think this is why the medical center had to hire so many PAs and RNPs and why so many of the hospitalists quit.  As an attending, I make the residents put in the orders.  The residents make the interns do it.   They new interns are at least trying to make a sport of it.  After every one of those stupid alerts they hit the desk.  The call it banging the head of Chicken Little.  Of course, with warning fatigue, sooner or later there will be a real warning that will be missed.  If only we could combine those warning alerts with an electronic version of "whak-a-mole" or you could fling the warnings like "angrybirds".

1 comment:

SeaSpray said...

I'm sorry this is so annoying for everyone but I did laugh out loud when I read what FPOS was and the way you use it. :) Post was funny - although ..I know the situation is so bad - you just have to laugh or get creative to deal with the BS. What a waste of time for everyone and hopefully patients will not be at risk because of it.

I feel like so much is being thrown at all of us politically - national/world concerns, the HORRIBLE fallout from the ACA, etc ..that I am war weary of it all. So many people are. But ...we can't give up.

Throckmorton, do you like your emr now? I hope all is well with that. It must be hard for experienced docs who know how things were. But at least the new med students won't be missing how good it was and are coming into practice with the way it is now. and there must be good things that have come about thru this process too. I hope so anyway.