The Games People Play

One of the things I like about Americans, they are after convenience, all the great time saving inventions of the last say 150 yrs if not invented by an American have been taken by the American public and they have run away with them, I remember the jealousy I had when watching American programs as a child, the Microwaves, dishwashers, Garbage disposal (they never clicked in the UK) Video recorders etc and who of my age group and above didn't marveled at the start of the Rockford Files, "hi this is Jim Rockford, leave your name and message after the tone" brilliant!! the first answer machine of my life was the mid to late eighties...I remember the first video I ever saw Gregory's Girl, March 20th 1983, 53 Kingsgate Ave, phone 63147, (family and phone numbers have long since moved on!) hired for me by my Aunt Chris and Pauline, that how momentous that was to me, the space age had arrived...




I love technology, whenever I had the money I would buy the latest thingamajigs, sport it proudly for a few months, then a new thingy would appear, and I would save and save to get it, for my 18th I convinced my parents to buy me an Amstrad word processor, which I kept til I was 24, a computer of any sort was still so unusual in 1994 when I final said my sad farewells to it, a friend took it on for a year or so, I think I was the only student at that time amongst about 200 to have a computer of any sort.




I remember about 95 I had an American Friend who would walk miles to the university to "borrow" their computers to send "e-mail" I had never heard of it, even when he explained I couldn't understand how computer if you just put an address in knew how to talk to another one to which it wasn't directly connected!




Just before this the hospital we worked at got computers 1 per ward, for the nurses to use (another American idea) for care planning, which would be good except for 3 small problems, care plans are updated at the end of a shift, at the hospital I worked at this was 15.30 so from 15.00 till 15.30 you had 4 staff nurses near killing each other to enter their records on 8 patients and it was a slow system so they could go home, (I bet in this day and age it would be 2 staff nurses to 16 patients) hospital managements answer was...start earlier...conveniently missing the point that the report was about the patients condition at the END OF THE SHIFT! not at 13.30 not at 11.30 the END of the shift!




second problem was all staff and enrolled nurses where given passwords, straight off, as it was a nurses care program, Doctors reasonably not given them, only the Consultants and all doctors further down the food chain started to complain "we need to see the nurses care plans"...since when? never in my career has a doctor felt my plan was imperative, and never since the novelty of the computers wore off has one looked at them, in fact until a patient is discharged they are kept separately from the medical notes...any road up, the doctor won their battle after oh.. a week! and from that moment on nurses couldn't use the computers, especially at weekends as a golf game had been installed!!!




Third problem the care program was crap! I remember and bare in mind I am the person, people go to with computer problems! that the patient has a bed bath the minimum amounts you could put in per day was 54!!! I feel hospital management saw technology, wanted to follow and brought it off a guy called Garry (with 2 r's , so he was slightly sophisticated) out of his old motor in a car park!




In 1994 my Mum and Dad bought me a mobile phone cos they where sick of never being able to get me, it was on a contract sort of thing, in those days you could actually understand them! ANY WAY,I kept that phone for about a year, and it pissed me off, I'd be out and it would call my parents to report my misdoings, without my say so, they would hear me out! I couldn't actually say to anyone Oh sorry missed your call!! mobile where expensive then, so people expected them to be clamped to your side, and 3rdly I got very drunk one night, someone phoned me as I got out of the cab, I pulled it out of my pocket, and it went flying into a bush! we tried calling it but I had let the battery go a bit flat....never seem again...and this is the start of my problem with technology...but I still love it also....

The Mobile phone, I began to hate it, I was never free, even though in those days it was expensive to phone a mobile, people did it, and because they could get me at any time any place, thay stopped making definate plans ( I wasn't the only person to have mobile phone at this time) "I'll ring you at 8 and tell you where we are. "no tell me now and I'll meet you!" lossing my mobile is the best thing I ever did, took me till 2003 before I brought another one, and that was because I missed 2 trains on the trot, by phoning my hubby on a payphone saying I'm on the... my dad was very ill, so his care home also needed a number, so I got a mobile, Pay as you go in 4 years I spent £60 the phone died with about £7 on it!!

And back to convenience, a mobile phone is a useful tool but it has made us lazy, rather than a list when you send you other half out to the supermarket do you give them a sort of half a list? and they call you endlessly?