Tormented: EMRs’ Linguistic Handicaps
There are some things that Electronic Medical Records do well and there are some things that Electronic Medical Records do poorly. To say that I need Electronic Medical Records to help me type is nothing short of ridiculous. Unfortunately, when engineers meet computer programmers and try to help health care professionals type in the health care record in the name of “safety,” the results can torment those they’re trying to help.
Take auto-spelling, for instance. I have the nasty habit of typing “Lungs: Claer to A&P” and marvel at the auto-correction feature automatically correcting my typing to “Lungs: Clear to A&P.” This is an example of the wonders of electronics.
But when I type “DC Cardioversion” and the computer won’t left me type “DC” because it wants to know if I mean “discharge” or “discontinue,” the computer becomes intrusive, obstructive, and performs a service that should be right up there with water-boarding. I mean, is someone really going to mistaken that I mean “Discontinue cardioversion” or “Discharge cardioversion” when I’m typing my operative report? I could see this being a problem in the order-entry portion of the software, but when I’m typing by progress note or operative note?
Please.
Even better are the wonderfully useful letters “MS.” These might mean “magnesium sulfate,” “mental status,” mitral stenosis, “MS Contin,” “multiple sclerosis,” “musculoskeletal,” “Ms.,” or maybe even “Mississipi.” So, instead of being able to type a logical sentence without interruption, the doctor finds that that a drop-down pick list prevents those magic letters from being typed. It seems the chance that a nurse will wonder if you’re prescribing a drug in a southern state trumps the ability to enter a simple sentence on the computer. This is, after all, how we’re preventing medical errors.
But I wonder if these computer engineering road blocks are doing something much more insidious and detrimental to our health care delivery of tomorrow: like devaluing independent thought, reason, permitting the subtleties of context, and common sense.
No, better to torment instead.
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