+1 to above. This is exactly my complaint. Lots of doctor-hate above which is weird, but look at the flip side, from a doctor who also does programming and studied CS. The EMRs are TERRIBLE. All of them. However, I don't rant about the incompetence of the IT programmers, because it is a gulf that we both need to address (physicians and IT designers).

I don't see this staying this way forever, but fixing usability issues are long overdue. In one Epic Fail system (those in the industry know what I mean), there is difficulty in even searching for a drug, you have to do old-style SQL type queries "starts with" or "contains", and spell rythmol as rhythmol and it can't figure it out. Obviously there are dangers to auto-correct with drug names, but finding the correct drug with a simple verification should be facile.

The UI designers also think that "clicking" is easier, but when you do something 100 times a day, as others have said, having full keyboard control is desired.

Finally, to load a patient or switch a context might take 20 seconds. Imagine that you have time-sensitive tasks and each time you do something there is 20 seconds of not-really-usable time wasted where you have to sit there and check the screen to see if it is updated? It is beyond frustration and doesn't work into the workflow of seeing patients.

Granted, I had the same complaints in 2005, and can't believe 11 years later I have the exact. same. complaints.

It said "Virgin could take on Tesla", so I thought it was about a fellow Slashdotter forming his own company.

For those who haven't seen "slashdot media" yet, our beloved /. is now categorized as "Social Media for B2B Technology". See for yourself: http://slashdotmedia.com/about...

Go on, click the "Tour the new Slashdot" button (can't be opened in a new tab) and wait for the nausea to kick in. Meaningless marketing buzzwords, "feedback tools", "user engagement" and so on and so forth.

It's over. The trained monkeys in marketing have won. A sad day indeed.

Back when I was in college, the concept was known as Political Correctness, Multi-ethnic Cohesiveness, and Inclusiveness Actions, which people attempted to encourage in business settings. It got shortened to "PC Card" in the early 2000's. :)

There were insufficient bathroom breaks; European in the seat.

As an Austrian, if you asked me what language I speak I'd probably either say Austrian or German with a Viennese accent. The differences in pronunciation and vocabulary compared to regular German (as well as pretty much all accents spoken in Germany and Switzerland) are large enough that our language seems to be an important part of our national identity.

And honestly, there's quite the language barrier between Austrians and Germans and communicating might take a conscious effort on both sides to speak the agreed-upon "standard German". And even then you might find out that regular words you use all the time are unknown to the other party.

Hell, even some friends and I sometimes have trouble understanding each other because of differences in dialects, and we only live 200km (~120 miles) apart. Never mind weird parts of the country like Vorarlberg where even a friend who's into linguistics couldn't understand any freaking thing they were saying.

You two have a good understanding of the tradeoffs involved with decision-making. Unfortunately, many people do not and see suboptimal outcomes as "errors" in a very black-and-white world. I think the IOM report fed into many fears.

I am continuously annoyed about the IOM report -- as other posters have said, it is now out of date, and sensationalist IMO in the way it counted mistakes and deaths / errors. An "error" that had no effect in a critically ill patient who died 3 days later was counted as a fatal outcome. On the other hand, the sensationalism at the time might have been a bit warranted -- doctors are often very complacent and perhaps the attention was needed / desired to get large scale action. However, it had the side effect of the erosion in trust in those that work very hard, diligently, and conscientiously every day.

I very, very rarely use handwritten prescriptions. Certainly as inpatient (patients who are currently in the hospital) essentially all major medical systems have computer order entry as of 2012. In my outpatient clinic (people just coming for a doctor appointment) it is 100% computer medical scripts with automatic interaction and allergy checking. All of my hospital system is this way.

I can't remember ever having ANY medication or dosing error. Obviously I can't know about it if I don't catch it, but computer order entry, automatic checking, and the many layers of check from doctor, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, and nurse, (and patient!) does provide a safety net.

Can we do more? Well, banning handwritten prescriptions would be a pretty bad idea (if I'm in a community clinic wanting to give a patient some antibiotics for an ear infection, I think I should be allowed.) There are side effects to every initiative. Encouraging computer use is indeed being done, but limited by cost concerns.

The cupcake is a lie.

Very nice. A friend of mine just wrote an easy to use cloud app that does many of these steps automatically. Free yourself from GoDaddy!

https://laterdaddy.herokuapp.com/