The other night, I was asked by my daughter to review her personal statement for Medical School applications (yes, despite watching what her father goes through, she still wants to go to Medical School-probably because her mother, who is also a physician, chose a specialty that is not Primary Care) for grammar and content. When I asked her for the papers, she gave me “that look” and told me she had “sent me a link to share the document” for review in Google Docs. Nevermind the fact that when I was in this same situation 30 years ago, I was reviewing handwritten personal statements with 2 of my brothers at the kitchen table. But I’m not technologically inept. I’m adept with Microsoft Word. I set up my own smartphones and computers and can troubleshoot problems when necessary. I listen to a 3-hour nationally syndicated Tech Show every Saturday and Sunday. I even have a Google Docs account and use it myself for writing. Despite this, I was amazed at all of the functionality within the software that my daughter used to make changes, on her own computer, from across the room, as I watched it occur, in real-time, on my own computer screen. When I expressed amazement at all of this, I again got “that look” accompanied by the obligatory roll of the eyes. To avoid further embarrassment, I didn’t bother to tell her about the necessary drafts, redrafts/rewrites that I had to go through “in my day.”
I watched with envy and amazement over the last 2 months as my 2 college-age kids completed their classwork, lectures and testing online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were able to watch the lectures in real-time or at a later and more convenient time. It didn’t seem to faze them that when I went to undergraduate, you had to either make it to class on time, or else borrow the notes from a friend and hope that they were paying attention. Sure, by the time I got to Medical School, we had a Note Service which consisted of someone simply recording a lecture on cassette tape and then typing it up, word-for-word, in no particular format, requiring you to read through 5-10 pages of single-spaced type-written notes and then take notes on them. Most of the time, large and important sections of the lectures were missed due to a bad tape, the individual forgetting to flip the tape, or lack of professional recording and sound system devices. In other words, if you wanted reliable lecture notes, you had better attend each lecture. I stared in disbelief at the actual Powerpoint slides that my kids were able to download from their professor’s class site….more eye rolls and sighs.
I’ve grown accustomed to the eye rolls and sighs I receive on a nearly daily basis from my kids when I don’t recognize the name of yet another social media or entertainment platform that happens to be in vogue this month. I know that because they grew up with all of this technology, it will undoubtedly come easier for them and what they view as just regular everyday routine technology will likely seem fantastical to me. But what I never realized was that much of this technology would affect me in my everyday profession as it does now. When I am asked by my kids about the most important class I took for becoming a doctor (e.g. Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology) I typically refer them back to 10th grade of High School and my Introduction to Typing Class with Mrs. Kwerty. I’m ashamed of this answer, yet very proud of my 70 words per minute ability. I watch my colleagues struggle with their index finger hunt and peck technique and thank Mrs. Kwerty every day.
Over the past 7 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have spent countless hours attempting to walk octogenarians through the process of setting up the necessary applications for their telemedicine visit with me on their “smartphone” only to later realize that what they have is, in fact, a flip phone, often of the Jitterbug™ variety. This has served to only add further insult to injury in my ‘epic’ daily struggle to navigate the mandated electronic medical record (EMR) which, when instituted, was hailed as the fix for poor physician penmanship and disorganized, overstuffed paper charts. Each time I start to develop confidence and agility with my current EMR, the developer releases an “update” which only serves to change my usual workflow and therefore slows my productivity, similar to the updates pushed to my iPhone by Apple every few months. These updates seem to excite my kids with all sorts of new functionality to their phones but frustrate me with changes to my usual routines. My complaints to my kids about this, too, are usually met with “that look” and the eye roll followed by comments about how I should “just break down and get myself a Jitterbug™” or that I “won’t need a cellphone in the nursing home they place me in someday.”
Maybe I am getting old.