I have been up and awake for almost 18 hours now. I did one of my better shifts in the ED last night. By the time I was done there was no transport to take me back hom eso I had to sit and wait in the resident lounge. Tried to sleep the time off but it gets kind of difficult to go to sleep in all the lights around you. Missed the first bus and had to sit and wait for the next one for 40 minutes.
Anyways I am here to talk about the kind devil in disguise that I have had to learn to operate and handle in the last 3 weeks. It is the all encompassing health care management system used in our hospital and in most of the hospitals in the US, with paperless working. It is essentially a programme that keeps track of everything that goes on with the patient and the related entities from every health care provider's point of view. When a patient comes to the hospital he/she comes in contact with a diverse number of providers. There are the doctors, there are the nurses, there are the radiology staff, there are the laboratory staff. And these are just the few that I have named. EPIC keeps the record of the patient for all of these providers which is focussed from their point of view. So a doctor logs onto EPIC and charts his thoughts and orders. The nurse logs on to the patient chart and logs the vitals and the medications that she has administered. The radiologist logs on and records his/her findings. The people in the laboratory add their results.
It is a complex system and the mere number of individuals that have to use it makes it more complex in structure. So there is more than one way of doing the same thing and one has to learn his or her own ways of doing the same thing in the shortest possible time and in the most efficient manner. It takes some time to get used to the interface and a little more time to learn the shortcuts.
EPIC systems corporation was foinded in Madison, WI in 1979. It has around 170 customers worldwide and our hospital is one of the customers.
Anyways I am here to talk about the kind devil in disguise that I have had to learn to operate and handle in the last 3 weeks. It is the all encompassing health care management system used in our hospital and in most of the hospitals in the US, with paperless working. It is essentially a programme that keeps track of everything that goes on with the patient and the related entities from every health care provider's point of view. When a patient comes to the hospital he/she comes in contact with a diverse number of providers. There are the doctors, there are the nurses, there are the radiology staff, there are the laboratory staff. And these are just the few that I have named. EPIC keeps the record of the patient for all of these providers which is focussed from their point of view. So a doctor logs onto EPIC and charts his thoughts and orders. The nurse logs on to the patient chart and logs the vitals and the medications that she has administered. The radiologist logs on and records his/her findings. The people in the laboratory add their results.
It is a complex system and the mere number of individuals that have to use it makes it more complex in structure. So there is more than one way of doing the same thing and one has to learn his or her own ways of doing the same thing in the shortest possible time and in the most efficient manner. It takes some time to get used to the interface and a little more time to learn the shortcuts.
EPIC systems corporation was foinded in Madison, WI in 1979. It has around 170 customers worldwide and our hospital is one of the customers.
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