5 West Nursing

Since August 15, 2006, we’ve seen how the new clinical documentation system has taken us from supercharged, efficient and productive workers, to not so efficient, lethargic, incremental overtime guzzlers. Thanks to OPUS Clindoc, we have 3 times more to do, and most of the time, it doesn’t make any sense… at least to some of us.

If you’re like me, I’m sure you have a wish list of things that could make your life easier when it comes to working with OPUS Clindoc, or at least with the whole documentation system itself. I’ve heard someone once say, “it’s supposed to be the Rolls Royce of electronic medical records.”. I beg to differ…this thing is like the Honda Civic of EMRs… (or not even… the Honda Civic performs better).

Notwithstanding, this thing is here to stay, so we might as well embrace our new found burden and get on with our lives. Hey, it’s not like we’re the ones paying the big bucks to use this thing… they are paying us to use this thing and we might as well take advantage of the benefits OPUS Clindoc has to offer, such as (and not limited to) incremental overtime, slow response, redundancy, and the other stuff this system was supposed to eliminate.

However, if you’re like me, I’m opposed to that. In fact, I believe that computer systems (or systems for that matter) is there to make our work more efficient, productive, and enjoyable. Fact is, I was excited that we were going to have electronic documentation systems in place… boy was I wrong! I’ve worked with other systems before, and apples to oranges… this is a lemon! If this is your first experience with an EMR I hope you don’t think this is the bomb… trust me, there are better systems out there. I can only hope that the promised “upgrade” will make things better and faster, hopefully soon and not 5 years from now!

In the meantime, what can we do to help? NOTHING!

Well, not really. You can help.

How?

By talking!

Please don’t be one of those people that lost hope and gave up and just kept quiet because you were beat up for too long with “they don’t listen, so I stopped talking”. If everybody stopped talking, there will be not enough noise to make a difference. Heck… we are what makes this company tick… we might as well be proud of who we are and where we work. After all, we represent UHS to their customers… isn’t it about time we take some ownership and be proud of it? So in light of this… lets start the ball rolling!

If you have any suggestion on how OPUS Clindoc could be improved, please do post a comment under this article or visit the OPUS page, “Oh PUS Clean Doc!”. Lets get more voices in and hopefully this time… they’ll REALLY LISTEN!