How long does it take an NHS doctor to turn on a computer?

Nothing new here....

I once spent 20 minutes talking to a user about why they could not logon to the VPN from home. After tracing the problem back as far as her internet connection, she proclaimed....

"The internet is plugged in, I just pressed the button to make the flashy lights go off because they are annoying".

You can't help some people, and that's why I drink.

The thing about this type of story is that they make a nice little anecdote for colleagues or even a forum on the interwebs, but as a story on an IT news site? No.

I've got loads of them after very nearly 30 years in IT; there was the woman who sent me a photocopy of a 5.25" floppy when I asked for a copy of her data disk; or the man who answered "yes" to the question "is there a green light on the front?" only for me to find much later the monitor was switched off - "you didn't ask if the light was lit!". You know what most of them taught me? That I was expecting to much of the user. That's not being patronising. What you need consider is what the user actually NEEDS to know to do their job day to day. Don't take anything for granted beyond that.

I'll often hear colleagues mocking an end user's lack of knowledge - "he didn't even know what an Ethernet cable looked like!" - and then have to explain to that same colleague that the router isn't issuing any more DHCP adresses because 8 out of the pool of 10 addresses are in use and there are 2 conflicts. I don't then mock that same colleague because the didn't know what show ip dhcp conflict looked like.

Don't mock an end user for their lack of IT knowledge until you have the same knowledge of every appliance you use. Are you sure mechanics and plumbers don't make jokes about you?

Gosh Dan, you're so smart.

A PACS monitor is quite a bit more substantial than a normal LCD monitor and so not that difficult to confuse with an all-in-one unit.

The doctor gave you the asset number of the monitor, so why did it take you so long to identify it as such?

Since you wasted 90 minutes while a patient that needed an X-Ray looking at waited, I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out why the doctor didn't say thank you.

PC's, Mainframes, Medical devices, Building management systems...

All fine,

but can I work out how to scan, collate or even copy on the work multi function printer - no.

Is there a manual - no

Is there a customised UI - yes so internet manual useless

copy does not work until logged in, logging in lists all the items on the print server...

What do all the buttons do anyway...

Yes we're all so funny.. but

I'm sure there's a website somewhere that a doctor is recounting the time an IT guy told him about the difficulty he had satisfying his wife, how she'd never climax and was rarely "ready" for him.

No doubt the doctor tried gently to explain that she wasn't turned on.

Brainspace full

Academics are well known for lacking IT skills - it's not their specialist area. They use their brainspace for that and not IT.

I always used to operate the overhead projector for the head of Theology at my college during lectures because he'd never learnt how to do it. He wasn't lazy, it just wasn't for him. Doctorates all over the shop, used to work for the Pope etc. OHP? Fail. Someone else will solve that.

Doctors - the more senior, the more 'right' they have to be all the time to save lives.

However thinking that you are right on a topic you no little about is, as we know, common for IT.

Teachers - married to one - works with IT all day long, but lacks the IT support required.

Schools spend the money on the sparkling new equipment. Having worked in hundreds of schools the majority had some kit in that nobody could fix, and often had no support contract to ask someone who could. The IT staff they had where overworked and always underpaid, and where managed by IT Teachers who had usually been teachers all their careers and so not IT people. With the best will in the world it won't work as well as having IT people manage them.

We live in a world of specialisms. Get used to it. It keeps us in work anyway.

Get this all the time with new Dell AOI

Part of my job is occasionally interacting with end users (Doctors) in Hospitals, since all the old desk units were replaced with Dell 9030 all in ones the amount of call outs due to 'computer not switching on' went up 800%, in a way I blame Dell almost as much as the end user as they assume the computer is just a monitor and the power button is on the side and not marked clearly enough.

It's annoying when you make a call out after asking them repeatedly if they have turned the machine on then get there to find it's not turned on so turn it on and just leave.

I find Doctors are the worst for not following simply guided instructions, other users seem to have more common sense,

Just last week had one doctor that was adamant that his powerpoint (which was less than a megabyte) contained a 10 minute video file and went ballistic when I pointed out it simply wasn't possible, the audience knew it as well so the guy was just making himself look foolish.

"Academics are well known for lacking IT skills - it's not their specialist area. They use their brainspace for that and not IT."

But that's exactly the same as forgiving somebody because "using a pen and paper" is not their specialist area. It's pure, basic, life-skills like knowing how to operate a light switch.

How long does it take for a GP to turn on a PC?

Most don't - the reception staff do it first thing in the morning because they take so long to boot into Window

Snap!

I had the same issue. It was a clinician who's PC was stuck shutting down (running win98). Powered off and on the device, no change. Held the button for 5 seconds, same thing. When I asked them to describe the button and surroundings they said, "All I can see is a label saying AOC and a button... why are you laughing..."

People don't know about or forget about the hidden parts of devices that they don't usually interact with. I've "repaired" TV sets where the poor picture was the result of the aerial amplifier being switched off or unplugged, but I don't blame the non-technical user for not even knowing that they had such a device.

After all, the only on/off switch on any of the things that the average computer user interacts with in on the monitor, and in many work places the computer is tucked away somewhere out of plain sight (just like the aerial amp), and often have a power switch that is even more hidden.

One of our office printers has its power switch in such an unlikely position that it took me 15 minutes to find it - and I knew what I was looking for!