I ran into a colleague this week who said that he wanted to return something to me.
About 20 years and 3 EHR’s ago, I was vigorously trying to get doctors to use the electronic health record. Of the many complaints from my colleagues, one (spoken in private) was:
I’m not good at typing. How am I going to use this computer program to take care of patients? I’m an excellent doctor, but I will look like a complete novice to the patient.
I was surprised and grateful that my colleague would be so vulnerable and willing to share this knowledge with me.
Among my senior medical colleagues and aging Boomers, many had never taken typing classes in school.
For you millennials and post-millennials, consider this: typing in my middle school was a rigorous, difficult class.
Our class of 30 students sat in front of manual typewriters. MANUAL. No electric power. No backspace key. Only a messy black ribbon, keyboard mechanical keys that you pushed about an inch downward so that the strike-lever would rise up in the mechanism, strike thru the ribbon and leave a letter-shaped mark on the paper.
In the first days of the class, one would type one letter at a time, about one second apart, to avoid jamming strike-levers together, and to avoid making a typo. Every typo required getting out a bottle of Wite-Out, to paint over the incorrect letter, blow on the paper to let it dry, then type the correct letter.
Accuracy was key. More than 2 errors per page of double spaced manuscript during your examination would get you a failing grade.
It was faster to type slowly and accurately rather than blast through and paint over typos.
After a few weeks in class, our fingers got stronger and we learned to push the envelope of speed. Instead of my current 80 words per minute with infinite backspace capability on my laptop, I was proud to reach 38 words per minute on a manual typewriter with NO errors per page.
But I digress.
Due to my colleague’s worry, I went to the local computer store and bought 10 copies of ‘Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing’ a popular CD-ROM that would run on either Windows 98 or MacOS9 computers.
This must have been 2004(?) We were deploying Allscripts Touchworks electronic health record at the pace of 2 or 3 clinics at a time with a skeleton crew of about 8 analysts, trainers and me. I walked privately among physician offices and quietly offered Mavis to my esteemed colleagues. All 10 copies quietly disappeared into purses and briefcases to go home, so that prying eyes would not see.
One of my colleagues told me ‘Mavis and I go a couple rounds every evening, and my typing is improving every week.’
Most copies have been lost to the dustbin of history; but one copy resurfaced via my colleague who is still my office neighbor twenty years later. He was cleaning out some very old files and noted that I had written on the software box:
Property of CT Lin. Please return.
And here he is, true to his word.
I am even more grateful that the lack of typing skills did not drive him out of medicine. I am aware of a handful of docs over the years who, fed up EHRs, ended up retiring. At least in a handful of cases, Mavis and I may have deferred the loss of thoughtful clinicians from our medical field.
Thank you Mavis.
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