Anticlue

Careers change over time. 10 years ago I was a programmer. I was committed to learning the latest technology and how to apply it. I was fascinated with windows and visual basic 6.0. I also got introduced to project management and assuring service excellence as we were preparing for the y2k non-event. I was committed to being the best technician in the company.

In 2001, through the illness of a close friend, I became introduced to Excellence in Care. What healthcare was about really clicked - providing care to those in their time of need. Care was all encompassing concerned with the patient's emotional, mental, and physical health, along with support for the caregivers. I also began to see how my profession could directly enhance and augment the practitioner's work. I was committed to enabling the clinician's work through technology.

In 2003, the ephiphany of it was a we not a me, in our IT department offering great customer service was needed. The team is what accomplishes great service, and the team needs to be considerate of the impacts it has on the business. Service Excellence is about always going that extra mile for our colleagues, physicians, and patients. In IT we are very interdependent upon each other to go that extra mile.

There have been a lot of discussions over what it means to be a healthcare it professional. I've seen extremes of directors stating I'm just not very technical, but I understand a lot about the business of healthcare to directors relaying the other extreme. Everyone agrees excellence is service is needed, but getting there is hard.

As a healthcare it professional, I would recommend becoming committed to all three concepts and leading by example. After all, these are dependent concepts. It is necessary to understand the daily life of our business colleagues on the financial, academic, and clinical side. Knowing their pain points and processes, can help remove the pain points in the future through business investments with an IT component. If you do not have service excellence and technical excellence, the computing infrastructure will be so frail and brittle, the department's time will be committed to break fix activity not making the paper care process digital. If the infrastructure is frail and brittle, your department will be an organizational pain point.

If you enjoyed this post, please check out these other entries:

• The road to good perceptions is different than the road to good outcomes


• Inheriting a weak department


• Missing IT skills in 2004

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