Digitalisation has changed my work and working methods a lot throughout the last ten years. When I started my career, I used to record my work on paper. When a nurse in morning shift used large handwriting, it was difficult for nurses in evening and night shift to adjust their handwriting to make it fit in the writing area. I managed to develop a small, yet readable handwriting. The utilisation of computers has literally ended the handwriting problem.
Covid-19 has been a game-changer in many ways. The speed of change in health care has increased rapidly since 2020. Working from home has risen exponentially and new ways of working are being innovated. Digitalisation has made treating a child’s pink eye (conjunctivitis) easier for parents and the threshold of consulting a professional has lowered. Although, some things can’t be done remotely. If I have dental problems, I’d rather like to meet a dentist than send a picture of my mouth. Using Google to diagnozing myself is a double-edged sword.
In the future, I hope that we will find a golden mean of digitalisation in health care. There needs to be more research on its affects, i.e how it has effected on feelings of loneliness and social exclusion on different age groups. The possibilities of digitalisation in health care are almost limitless, but it has to be done based on research, not price.
GDPR and other regulations are an important part of my work. Data protection and information security has to be included in every step of treatment path. Roughly put, information security was formerly locking the nurses’ office’s door, keeping patients’ papers in stack and not talking about patients’ things in public. Introduction of computers has made cybersecurity more versatile and complex. There are 11 programs I use in my work, and each has a different password that need to be changed regularly. However, even if it is more difficult, I understand the risks of not maintaining information security and data protection properly. Regulations and instructions are needed, because the results of not following them could be devastating. GDPR, among other regulations, forms guidelines to my working ethics.
I currently work in a outpatient clinic that provides ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), and I was curious to find out what Chat GPT thinks about it. ECT is an effective treatment, but it has a historical stigma. I made questions both in Finnish and in English. The results in Finnish were neutral information and facts were mostly correct, but some risks that it considered plausible are highly unlike when the treatment is administrated by trained professionals. In English, the results were more comprehensive and factual. I didn’t find signs of the stigma, although I was many times guided to consult my healthcare provider.
During this assignment, I used Chat GPT for the first time in my life. I used to think that it is a fun application without real value for learning. Turns out that it can be considered a potential tool for learning because it provides information quickly and in this case, it is mostly correct. I still need to fact check the information. The videos I watched for this assignment were quite old, and it would have been interesting to know what are the most recent innovations in digitalisation and robotics.