Electronic Medical Record

In the past few months, we made a huge switch from one electronic medical record to another. I am not privy to all the reasons behind the switch, but I think it's a good thing. We used to use a hybrid electronic and paper system with some things on the computer (electronic ordering, for example) and other things on paper (notes, documentation). This became unwieldy and cumbersome; it was hard to find some information or even know if it was available. There was duplication of work and tests, and the whole system felt as though it had been constructed piecemeal. We switched over to Epic, which I had used in training. It's still a very clunky platform, but at least five years of using it in residency taught me its ins and outs. I've come to realize it can be a fairly powerful tool, but its simply not designed for most clinicians in mind. I think for some of us, who grew up programming on C++ and BASIC, who took computer science classes in college, who tinker with our computers and apps to personalize them, there's some desire to get EPIC to work better. But for most, it's just another frustrating thing we have to wrangle with.

In any case, the transition was interesting for me because I pretty much went through the same thing in residency. There were some required classes, then a few weeks of "shadow charting" where we practiced on the new system while documenting on the old system, then a "go-live" period. From my end, it went pretty smoothly since I already knew how to use the software. The hospital poured significant resources into smoothing the transition, and I think they did pretty well in making it happen. Preparation really prevented any large IT disasters, and now that we've been with the new system for several months, it almost feels hard to remember what the old one was like.