Yesterday my computer decided not to charge the battery. A message: “not charging”. It stayed at 22% when plugged in. I checked the power cable. Everything connected perfectly. So why? I had been on vacation for two weeks. Maybe that had something to do with it? Did the battery die? I unplugged the main cord. Nothing. The battery slowly went to 20% while working. The backlight reduced because of battery saving options. That made me a bit more nervous. I plugged it in again. I see a small light blinking next to the power inlet. What does that mean? And again “not charging”. Why? I used a different socket. Nothing. Still “not charging”. I opened ‘settings’ and went to ‘systems’ and opened ‘battery’. Nothing useful, no errors. Okay, I’m smarter than that, so looked at ‘batteries’ under ‘device manager’. Nope, no useful messages except: ‘This device is working properly.’
Power off. Why is that light at the power inlet still blinking? Power on. Still blinking. No change. I Googled the problem and found there is a hardware test on my system to check the battery. I found the button on my computer. Tried it. No errors found. Everything is still working as it should according to my computer, even though I had a different opinion. Further search on Google. A reboot by pushing the on-button 5 seconds to off and then on again, continuous F2’s, depleting the battery (why??), then again charging the battery (which doesn’t work) and then another battery check in another menu. This sounds not logical, but okay. I pushed the button for 5 seconds to switch the laptop off. Off. The small light even stopped blinking. Maybe that was all? So, on again without all the F2’s. And it charged again. The device was working properly.
So, if you skipped this anecdote, good for you. Boring, isn’t it? And annoying, because of all the time it took to find the solution to this problem. In the same time a nurse could have given medication. Or washed a patient and/or cleaned the bed. Have a comforting talk. Or how many times just a hand on a shoulder and how many smiles to a patient?
With all the IT-solutions we can think off, the cool apps to make work easier, we still forget that they are dependent on devices like smartphones, tablets and computers and most of the time on good internet (Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, …). And while these devices and connections sometimes fail, a patient is waiting on food, medication or just a smile.
I’ve seen great solutions being laid aside by nurses, because of failing supportive technology. Suggestions to nurses to try to restart and log-in again, don’t walk with the mobile device, push some buttons and hope for the best, aren’t being followed as they take too much time and somewhere a patient is waiting. And as products fail in supporting the care for patients, ‘this nurse is working properly.’
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I wrote this blog on August 29, 2017 on my (now deleted) website on Design for Nurses. At that time, I did not yet watch the hospital through the lens of complex systems. Revisiting my observations, also included reading my previous blogs.
1) I can trace connections in this system: the dependency of patients on nurses on specific technology on supportive technology. Supportive technology, including Wi-Fi and electronic medical records, are large hubs in the network. Failure of or disconnection from these hubs influences multiple connected technologies.
2) The importance of context: I can spend an hour on fixing issues. A nurse often does not have that time. After some tries to solve the problem, she will find a work-around and continue her work, or maybe report it too.
Posted on August 29, 2017 on ‘Design for Nurses’-blog