Liz Fosslein speaks for us so perfectly.
In our line of work (optimizing the electronic health record to serve patients, and to reduce the burden for physician/APP colleagues), we serve many purposes.
Many internal forces buffet us, we have to manage them carefully:
- How much time goes to direct patient care, vs protected for informatics?
- How much overtime should I spend at work vs with family/friends?
- Which of 17 priorities should I work on?
- What skills do I need to grow in order to improve my effectiveness?
- What relationships do I need to improve? Which ones need repair?
These are difficult enough. Worse yet, we are buffeted by external forces:
- What is does my boss want from me this week?
- Which of many crises among my clinical colleagues do I help with?
- Which strategic priority am I not paying enough attention to?
- What state or federal regulation do I need to translate into EHR-speak?
- With leaders leaving and arriving in my organization, where do I stand?
The core of our work is about change. Change to adopt new technology, to adapt to new circumstances, to accommodate new teammates.
As the agents of change related to the EHR, we cause anxiety among colleagues. We are careful to mitigate the anxiety of change among our colleagues by carefully designing workflows, making them as obvious, and as useful as possible.
AND YET: As for informaticists ourselves, we crave stability in our work and our teams, so why are we ourselves dismayed by change?
In a down moment, one of my colleagues said this recently to me:
Things are stable, in an unstable way.
—anonymous hardworking informatics colleague
This hit me pretty hard. I feel it in my body. In a superficial, and also very deep way.
To combat this instability, I remember my gratitude. I am grateful for my thousands of informatics colleagues, locally and globally, using our technical and relationship skills unselfishly, to make things better for all around us.
CMIO’s take?
Within our hardworking IT and informatics teams, we engender trust in our relationships. By doing so, we can lay a foundation of joy in our work. Teams achieve so much more than lone wolves.
We will always have setbacks. And yet, we will always have each other.
Rock on, Garth. Rock on, Wayne.
