Digital Development in my work
I have worked in a hospital environment for more than 20 years as a biomedical laboratory technologist, mainly in the hospital laboratory. The main part of my daily job is conducted patient tests, and the effects of digitalization can be clearly seen over the years. At the beginning of my career, patient information was on paper in a patient folder, and a paper referral was needed for doing the right patient examinations. Also, some of the data provided by the research equipment were still calculated by hand using pen and paper. In my opinion, by calculating writing patient examination results with my own hands, I learned a lot of important things about the main basics about to work. When learning new things and combining theory with practical work tasks, it is useful to be able to practice in a practical environment than to learn only through digital devices. A deeper understanding is often achieved through combining theory with knowledge in practical activities and the learning that takes place in it and solving challenges. I believe that I have lot of benefited from this kind of learning process.
In my daily work, I use mainly the patient electronic health record (EHR) system Lifecare and the radiology information system (RIS). I also use many other software’s to achieve fast and accurate data storage and data transfer. The purpose of the RIS system is to improve the access to information, the diagnosis process and the making of treatment decisions by combining software units and to organize statistics. In my own unit, the RIS program is not in use in all possible parts because it’s cost more of money. At this time Finnish health care system is very big economic crisis, and that’s why we must manage with the resources what has been given to our unit and new acquisitions cannot be made. I think it would be very important in the future to develop more workflow and safe handling of patient data from one program to another. Technical implementations can reduce or even eliminate the occurrence of human errors by employees.
The laboratory uses a lot of different software and research equipment, so the medical technology unit is an important partner of ours. Medical technology has its own software, which is easy to use and necessary when introducing new research equipment or planning their annual maintenance or checks, and the program contains device usage history information.
In communication I use Teams every day as a communication channel with my colleagues and other healthcare professionals. The e-mail program Outlook is also used for communication. In many daily work tasks, I also use Microsoft Word and Excel software, for example to update research device instructions.
What I could use at my work
Instagram and Facebook are used in the recruitment of our hospital, when a new employee is applied for an open position. It’s important to gain visibility using many different social media channels. These social media channels reach most young students as well as newly graduated professionals who may be interested in working in our hospital or our work unit.
ChatGPT could be a good opportunity for acquiring information and processing it, because the service is able to utilize such a large amount of data that would take too much time for a human. However, the answers given by ChatGPT are a bit unreliable, so it’s hard to see a use case in my own work now. In the future, things may be very different, and then we’ll just wonder what exactly we’ve slowed down for.
In the development of teamwork and communication, it is good to make use of the various social media channels available on the market. I must admit that I have little experience with different channels, so there is plenty to learn. In my own work, it could be useful to use versatile new and well-experienced teamwork and communication channels, which would make it easier to reach different professionals to work on a common cause and share things with all participants. I would like to try the Mural program, for example, but due to information security, I don’t know if it is possible to get this in our hospital.
For a long time, I have been thinking about using the LinkedIn program for myself, but I haven’t managed to do profile for myself yet. LinkedIn is clearly today’s digital business card, which makes it easier to share your expertise with other professionals and employers around the world.
Self-evaluation
There are many social media applications and I have only little experience with Skype, Pinterest and Facebook. I have used these applications for communication and to search for ideas. From time to time I read my friends’ updates, but I put as little information or pictures of myself or my family on social media as possible. I still prefer to meet and talk with people face to face, for example over coffee or a walk. I understand that social media is a part of our everyday life and it is very useful, but I think you must be careful about what you spend your time on and how much, and whether it takes away from something else if you spend your free time in front of the screen.
In my own work, I can only use different applications to a limited extent, because in connection with the duty of confidentiality and information security, patient’s privacy must not be compromised under any circumstances. However, I think that in the future we will be able to experiment and make better use of different communication or teamwork applications if the data transfer is done safely.
The tasks in the course were interesting and made me think about my own attitude towards social media and the content shared on it. It was helpful to get to know the different social media channels, because many of the ones on the list I hadn’t even heard of before it was also nice to read other course participants’ blogs from different fields of work.