We have recently started using a new computer system at work, which allows (to a limited extent) electronic record keeping and note taking for patient charts.
Old chart entries are scanned in, so that you can pull up old charts from any computer in the hospital, and things like xray reports and blood test results are all accessible through it.
I personally find this a godsend, as it allows me to do a fair bit of my work without writing, and from anywhere I want to do it, rather than being tediously paper based from wherever the charts are kept (on the ward, in medical records, etc).
Recently however they added a new feature which allows you to directly add notes into the online charts, with the idea that in certain situations (especially outpatient clinics) doctors would simply type in notes, rather than writing things and having them scanned later.
Brilliant, I thought, and promptly started entering notes left right and centre, and taking to it like I’m sure the IT people were hoping everyone would, however I have been quite bewildered by the fierce resistance I have seen in my fellow doctors to the system.
Even the relatively tech literate and young (comparatively speaking) doctors seem to resist using it, not because they can’t, but seemingly because they don’t want to, and it is new technology. They want to keep on writing illegibly. They want to sort through piles of crusty old paper charts. They like being able to winge about the system, even though it really is quite a good piece of software, and both an improvement on the previous version that was in use last year, and a monumental improvement (in my opinion at least) on the paper systems of old.
I suppose that that is just the way the world works. Some day it will be me being tech illiterate, and some other young upstart winging at my intransigence.