I actually remember my first conversation about email, it was in 1989 and it was with a friend who was working at the university. I thought that it sounded really cool, but that could have been the beer talking as I was learning about this technology in the bar. My first company didn’t have this technology but of course the second one did and it was popular enough that I could actually send an email back home to the folks.
In the intervening years email has gotten a bit of a bad reputation due to the spam that inevitably jumped on the bandwagon. Other neat technologies that have since followed was the rise of the Internet, the ability to make phone calls over the Internet and well the ability to use the Internet on your cell phone.
The thing that I barely understand is that a hospital in this day and age without some of these fabulous technologies. It turns out that my wife’s hospital doesn’t have email and apparently part of the reason for this is due to the stubbornness of the doctors who work there. The hospital did want to offer this as a method for some forms of communication but there was a teeny tiny hook. If we give you email you must promise to read it every day.
When I was told that it took a minute for that to sink in, well of course I would read it each day. I would most likely grab a cup of coffee and sit at my computer and read my mail. Well, actually that is what happens in my world, but in this hospital not only don’t the doctors have their own desk, they don’t have their own computer so this does add an extra dimension that I didn’t originally consider. Yet, I can almost imagine it. Each day after doing a certain activity I would go to the computer in one of the departments and read my mail. Not quite the productivity wonder but still it may help communicate with the other doctors but perhaps only a couple of times per day.
Yet, I guess I wasn’t really listening to my wife as when I explained how it might be a good thing she explained that every day meant every day of the year, even if it is a public holiday, even if you are on vacation in the Swiss Alps.
Well, once I heard that I did better understand why the doctor’s didn’t want to get email installed at the hospital. I was still focusing on this when I heard that not only don’t they have email they also don’t have access to the internet. I never asked for the rational behind that, I simply heard that all the doctors use their personal cell phone to “surf the web” if they have a need for something.
I am just glad that last time I went to the hospital with a sniffle they didn’t break out a small container of leeches to get rid of all the bad blood.