I had a friend celebrate her 10 year old son’s learning and maintenance of life skills that are not being taught in schools any longer. And the emphasis on this learning is not being done at home, either.
The life skill he learned and demonstrated was shoe tying.
Apparently, all shoes are slip on now.
Disappeared is the learning to read cursive, or write cursive
And driving a stick shift.
This loss of life skills is not happening only in real life.
Working life has also lost some skills.
Hospital life definitely has lost skills.
No one takes off handwritten orders anymore. No one else is squinting at a doctor’s appalling penmanship and guessing that this order is 200 micrograms of fentanyl, not milligrams. This is also why many systems have moved to pharmacy clearing medicine orders. 200 milligrams is lethal. Layers of eyes looking at orders isn’t a bad thing and might save a life.
Many of the improvements that have been made, looking at you electronic health record and especially computer-based orders, have been done for safety.
There are other skills that really shouldn’t be disappearing.
Analog clocks as the world moves to digital ones. And for that matter military time. Most hospitals run on military time to be able to quickly differentiate between day light hours and evening/night hours.
Calculating medicine drips. Yes, the IV pump will do it for you but what if there isn’t a pump? Or electricity for that matter.
What nurses have forgotten is there is a world out there that does not have the advantages that we enjoy in this country.
Teach children to tell time on an analog clock, to read and write cursive, to drive a stickshift. Someday they may be in a place where they are commonplace.
Teach new healthcare workers and nurses to calculate and hang drips, to take handwritten off and make sure they are followed. To take a verbal order and do the same.
This new technology driven world is exciting and wonderful and new advances are being made all the time.
But what if all of that stopped?
And the kid/nurse/society had to go back to the way it used to be?
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 