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Along the way from emergency medical technician to registered
nurse, Mitch Nawojczyk became a storyteller. He delights
in firsthand accounts of nurses overcoming whatever technology
fears run wild in their imaginations.
Nawojczyk, 47, manages the information services department
for a two-hospital system in Houston-Doctors Hospital
Parkway and Doctors Hospital Tidwell. The community
hospitals combined account for 263 beds, 13,000 admissions
a year and 39,000 emergency room cases. "We have
two of everything"-ORs, ERs, intensive care units,
all supported by one IT department, he said.
"When I got into this field initially, it was
just with a nursing documentation system," Nawojczyk
said. That was 1992, when computers in hospitals primarily
handled billing and other business operations. But as
clinical systems evolved, so did Nawojczyk. The RN among
computer specialists now is responsible around-the-clock
for his hospitals' hardware and software applications
in both business and nursing. He traded his stethoscope
for a pager.
"I'm noticing more and more that lots of directors
of [information] departments are clinical persons now
rather than technical persons," Nawojczyk said.
He attributes that partly to the rise of informatics
specialties in nursing degree programs, something he
said he may one day pursue to supplement his on-the-job
computer know-how. "It's obviously easier to teach
a clinically minded individual the ability to deal with
computers than it is a computer person with the clinical
stuff," he said. "That doesn't mean there
isn't a need for the technical aspect; there certainly
is. We work hand in hand."
With virtually unlimited information just a few keystrokes
away for business staff and nurses, it's also up to
Nawojcyzk to ensure that hospitals' staff follows all
confidentiality and privacy laws.
His two favorite IT stories center on what Nawojczyk
describes as a battle for nurses' acceptance of computerized
documentation, whether it's the Meditech system he employs
or one of dozens of other systems that cover order entry,
labs, pharmacy, dietary-all the aspects of total patient
care.
But as a group and as individuals, he has a way of
winning over nurses.
Nawojczyk is an emergency medical technician-turned-RN.
He said that while working for an Arkansas ambulance
company, he was fascinated by what went on in emergency
rooms and had the desire to do more. So he volunteered
as an orderly, then as a technician and sort of evolved
into a nursing degree.
His move to information services-and then to director
of the IT department after about 10 years of emergency
and critical care was a similar evolution-starting with
a fascination for electronic documentation and a desire
to do more.
"I think back to our initial implementation back
in '92-93. I love telling this story," Nawojczyk
said.
"We were telling nurses that all of a sudden we're
taking their pens and papers away from them and they're
documenting on these little handheld devices that look
like Nintendo games. They were just freaking out,"
complaining it was too hard, it took too long, etc.
"We brought them into this kicking and screaming,"
Nawojczyk said, but once they got around the learning
curve and saw better communication among all caregivers,
and that documentation occurred directly against a plan
of care vs. on a generic form, they got excited about
it.
"Several years later, the hospital was up for
sale and the nurses were absolutely in a tizzy thinking
they were going to lose their computer system and have
to go back to hand documentation. It actually was kind
of heartwarming for me."
Nawojczyk said that if push came to shove, he'd return
to a clinical role, but he is regarded among staff as
the nurse that he is, and intends to stay in information
technology. But it's not a specialty for everyone, especially
those with thin skin, Nawojczyk said, telling another
story.
"I remember teaching class one day and this particular
psych nurse didn't want to be there. I was standing
at the door greeting the participants in the class and
this nurse came up to me. I could tell she was not happy.
"She said, 'I don't want to be here. I don't like
computers and I don't like you.' Those were her exact
words, and I thought to myself, 'Oh, boy! I've got my
work cut out for me today.'
"Well, at the end of the day, as they were leaving,
she was the one who praised the system the most. Once
she had the knowledge of what the tools, what the computer
system could for her, she was amazed. She did a total
turnaround. Once she got in there and realized that
she couldn't destroy something, she couldn't harm someone,
she couldn't break it, then she embraced it."
Pulse
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