Judy Lydon had a busy routine as a maternity nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She moved from room to room taking care of women and their new babies, checking vital signs, changing diapers, helping mothers hold and feed their newborns for the first time.
Then came the new computer system.
Now, she says, she’s become a captive of the keyboard, spending far more of her time recording every blood pressure reading, every feeding, every diaper change. The demands of the new system are so taxing and time-consuming, Lydon said, that the computer has come between her and her patients.
Thank you, sweet dear computer. Anything that keeps nurses away from mothers for at least a few minutes is fantastic. I’m still traumatized by the unending stream of loud and obnoxious cheeriness that nurses were directing at me in the hospital. I know they meant well but three days of hearing their LOUD, happy chirping every 15 minutes, day and night, almost did me in.
I don’t think I will ever forget the sweet moments when the nurse would turn away to the computer and, for a few blessed moments, would stop staring at and talking to me. The few times when the computer was off, nurses did things like wake me up at 3 am to give me a repeat lecture about the importance of not taking the baby to sleep in my bed. Which I was not doing and not planning to do. There is also the endearing tradition of waking a person up to ask if she feels any pain.
The only glimmers of humanity that I could see behind this fake and LOUD cheeriness of the medical personnel would occur whenever the computer took a minute to start and a nurse would get a moment to relax into her human personality as she stared at the dark screen.
The doctors and nurses in the article whine that computer management systems slow them down. We, as patients, are asked to side with medical professionals who are upset that something throws a wrench into their conveyor-belt approach to treating patients. In my experience, though, anything that slows down a doctor or a nurse and makes them stop their mechanical dispensation of prescriptions and actually see a patient is a blessing. It is kind of sad that computers are being accused of preventing people from acting too robotic and inhuman.
Clarissa's Blog 
I had the same experience with my first baby and was left bewildered and cross at the constant interruptions. I didn’t mind so much for some of the medical stuff – sure, maybe you need to check for jaundice at 3 am – but there was also a bunch of clearly unimportant stuff. And it was almost never the same nurse twice. With my second, we discovered that there was a “Do not disturb” sign that we could put on the door to block the nonessential stuff… I really wish someone had told me about this critical piece of information the first time round!!
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Maybe healthcare was about looking after patients once upon a time, now it’s about avoiding litigation. If someone would just mount a huge and well-publicized lawsuit to the effect that the constant interruptions and obsessive concern with documentation made them sicker, then maybe hospitals could be induced to scale back that unnecessary interference.
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Maybe healthcare was about looking after patients once upon a time, now it’s about avoiding litigation. If someone would just mount a huge and well-publicized lawsuit to the effect that the constant interruptions and obsessive concern with documentation made them sicker, then maybe hospitals could be induced to scale back that unnecessary interference.
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It was the worst with my 3rd kid. I don’t think I got a wink of sleep, and the baby was not the problem. As you say, it was every 30 min, night and day, for everyone’s vitals, pain meds (I had to have Ibuprofen for pain even though I didn’t want it). They interrupted/woke me up even when one nurse’s shift was ending, so she’d say goodbye, and then another nurse would come to introduce herself and say hello. WTF?
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I would bet a moderate amount of money that the protocols for not giving new mothers a moment of peace and quiet is due to their fears of malpractice suits. That is, either a new mother was left alone for a few minutes when something bad happened (and a large malpractice suit resulted) or they fear such a situation.
When in doubt, pester the patients so they can’t say you’re negligent seems to be the reasoning behind a large number of US medical practices.
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Something almost did happen because I was accompanied by a big, surly Russian prone to violent fantasies about doctors. 🙂
(Everybody from the USSR has reason to entertain violent fantasies about doctors ).
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