Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Maybe Not World-Changing, But...

Work has been pretty stressful lately. Before, in my old job, the stress had to do with people's lives - directly. If I mssed something or made a mistake, the consequences for that patient could have been fatal (at other times, sometimes merely... inconvenient). But now, in my new job, if we've made a mistake or forgot something, the consequences for the entire hospital could be fatal (at other times, sometimes merely... inconvenient). Every department is in a mad rush to make sure everything is ready for Saturday's Go-Live. Looks like this weekend I'm back to working night shifts for our 24-7 on-site support. This is going to one crazy weekend for me - and exciting. I've never worked on any project that has been as BIG or important for such a large population. I can't even put into words how huge the impact this project will have on our hospital. And to imagine, when we're finished we simply move on to another hospital and then keep on going until we've done all 12 hospitals. Whoa. Wish me luck, I'm gonna go puke. Any advice for dealing with this? I think my head is going to explode.

3 comments:

Mel said...

what's the project?

Oliver said...

the problem is, if something goes wrong, it affects patient care around the hospital. what if you thought were having a heart attack but couldn't get an ecg because the computer system didn't work the way it was supposed to?

Go-Live is when we turn on the new computer system at the hospital. we flip the switch on saturday and turn it on.

Oliver said...

btw Mel: the past 7 months i've been part of the team building the new computer system for the hospital. right now everything is paper-based (dangerous in a world where accessibilty means productivity) and we're computerizing a lot of processes thus creating an electronic medical record.