Old school

Working in the industry I do, you come across a whole spectrum of ages and experience. I am on the younger end of the spectrum, so I get a lot of advice and helpful hints from the more "seasoned" nurses. And it's great because they have some great insight into what works for them and what doesn't and rational behind why they do things they do now. But something I sincerely hope doesn't happen to me is becoming one of the old school nurses totally stuck in the past and fighting forward progress tooth and nail.

I'm getting REALLY sick and tired of hearing about all the bitching about the computer work we have to do. Someone actually said today (not a nurse, I don't think), "Computers are only as smart as the person running them." Ummm, seriously? If that's the case then we have some really stupid computers! It's not the computers fault you have no idea how to navigate the program it's running. It's your damn responsibility to learn what you need to learn to get your job done and do it well. Maybe it's my generation and we are just more accustomed to playing around on the computer and figuring out how to work a program on our own. It scares me to think where my kids generation will be and how much we'll have to learn from them! haha! I can remember being in 3rd grade and having "computer class" and the biggest thing we fought over was who got the computers with the color boarder on the screen. I remember playing Reader Rabbit!

And please stop staying that things would be better if we had never gone to computer charting. Because it wouldn't. And it wasn't better having to hand write everything. Having the computer expedites our work so much so as to allow us more time to spend with our patients like we are supposed to. Unfortunately, not eveyrone sees it that way. But it is what it is. It's my intention to always try to learn as much as possible to get by on what I need to do to be a good nurse. So please, keep your bitching to yourself!