I’ve been really lax when it comes to writing lately. I haven’t had the time or energy to be honest. But today…surprise…a bit to spare.

Work has been crazy busy as of late and it won’t be slowing down any time soon. Go lives seem to be occurring on a weekly basis. I’m hoping things settle for a few day over the holiday season, but I think I may be grasping at straws with this wish.

One year ago today, I was at my first go live from this side of it. I have to say, a year on and I still love it. Even when I’m beyond stressed, I wouldn’t change anything. I do love my role.

So many people ask what do you actually do. Well, I’m a Clinical Application Analyst and  while it doesn’t really sound like I’m a nurse; I use my clinical skills on a daily basis.

A typically day for me starts with a short walk through Windsor (I am kind of bummed that I don’t walk by the castle every day like I once did). I arrive at work, log onto my laptop, review emails, and prioritise my work for the day. Of course, similarly to bedside nursing, my priorities often get thrown out the window immediately.

Since I work in Support for a Healthcare IT company, my job consists of helping Nurses, Doctors, Unit secretaries, Medical record staff, and about anyone else who may need to log in and chart or access a patient’s chart. When I pick an “incident” off the queue, I need to determine if this is a system fault or user error. And yes, I have actually used the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”. Many times at first glance, I figure out that the user is not following the correct process or that they need a little training to get to where the need to be; however if I can’t determine if it’s a user issue, I will try to replicate in our internal environment. Basically, I spend my whole day pretending to chart in order to break the EMR. I have time limits to solve these issues though bases on the urgency of which the incident was raised. If it was raised as an Urgent, I have two hours to resolve this and give the customer a solution.

Some days, it’s very rewarding, I am able to replicate an issue in seconds and am able to raise a JIRA (ticket) to development so they will fix the issue. Other days, I spend hours, days, weeks, trying to figure out what the issue is. Those are the most frustrating and the most rewarding incidents.

I love being able to contact my customer and let them know that we figured out the issue and are going to get it sorted as soon as possible.

Never before in my nursing career, did I even consider Downtime as more than a hassle. But now I understand how important downtime can be to introduce new functionality to our EMRs or to fix a massive issue that as a nurse I may not have even been aware of, but is affect the hospital. Or that downtime may be used to patch a security vulnerability or to prevent a Clinical Risk. Now, I have taken part in Downtime, I’ve completed referencing after patching and ran conversion routines to ensure that the new functionality worked as expected when the system came back up.

Taking this job, put me on a massive learning curve and 18 months into the role, I’m still learning every day. Five years ago, when I moved to Australia, I never thought I’d be running SQL, training Superusers and travelling to sites all over England, Scotland, and the Channel Islands as a normal part of my job. As I look forward to 2018, I hope to expand my knowledge further and continue to grown as an Informatics Nurse. I’m even considering going back for my third Masters Degree…Maybe…I may not be that crazy.