Computers

I am perhaps a very old blogger but not a newcomer to computers. I have been working with them in some form or other since buying and using a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, then moved on through work PCs, acquiring in 1990 a supposedly portable PC, which I would describe as “luggable” as it was quite some weight. (No such thing as the lovely lightweight laptops of today.) It also had no mouse, but worked surprisingly well for its time.

At work, I was involved on the training side with Community Nurses using a hand held computer to record their work, and also used the data from them to produce information for the community nurse managers, working on the assumption that coloured graphs were easier to understand than screeds of printed data, so I self taught SuperCalc™ (a predecessor of MSExcel™)

At the same time, I also started an Open University Degree, some of the modules of which involved computers including even learning a bit of machine code.

For my next job I had to learn MS Windows™ and the use of a mouse - I reckon the best way to learn the latter is to play solitaire and minesweeper. Here I went on to pilot a ward nursing information system, which I recommended be ditched – it was functionally good, but was not easy for the ward nurses to use and that was very important.

My next post was to roll out a ward nursing information system throughout another Trust. The greatest benefits from that were from interfacing with PAS (Patient Information System) so that an admission on one system copied over to the other, and then later enormous benefits from the development of interfaces with Pathology, Biochemistry, Haematology and Radiology so that results were available on the wards almost real time for the junior doctors prior to the ward rounds. Subsequently results were made available on-line to local GP practices.

Training nurses was rather fun as my colleague and I had both been nurses before becoming involved with information and technology. Mind you there was quite a lot of resistance in some quarters, with some managers showing typical signs of fear at what might be discovered and some nurses just afraid of the technology.

A typical phone call might say “My computer isn’t working.”

Me “All right then, just switch it off, count to twenty slowly and then switch it on again,”

Pause

Me: “What’s showing on the screen now?”

Nurse: “Just what it was before.”

Me “Ah, I think you switched off the monitor instead of switching off the computer at the socket on the wall.”

Nurse: “I can’t find it.”

Me: “(silent sigh) All right, I’ll come down and fix it.”

Of course, the ward was always at the far end of the hospital from where I was.

So off I would go and turn the PC off and switch it on again and get it up and running.

During this time I was studying for an MSc in Medical Informatics, but had to give up part way through, as I found it too much to cope with travel, studying, work and nurse bank work. I had foolishly thought I would find it no more trouble than my first degree, but of course it was much more difficult and also I was older.

So, I retired.

Since retirement I have used my PC for internet banking, shopping, reading the newspapers and reading blogs.

Finally I plucked up the courage to create my own blog.