Just Story It

This guest post is by nurse Amy Dixon, who blogs at Creative RN, where it was originally posted on April 30. She attended a writing workshop last summer offered by the CHMP’s program in Narrative W...

After two months of use, we’ve learned to our sorrow that EMRs don’t tell us stories that make cognitive sense.

For years we've suffered from 'death by PowerPoint' as people's thinking and experience was forced into this limited computerized framework for transfering knowledge.

Now physicians are facing a similar problem. That's because we think of knowledge as discrete pieces of information instead of knowing that knowledge is best conveyed through stories and rich media imbedded with layered meanings.

Oh, when will we learn? Patients ARE stories. 

You would think that with all the work going on in storytelling these days (social media, marketing, branding, sales, leadership, agile software development, architecture, education, training, teamwork, and other business applications) someone somewhere would get the idea that Electronic Medical Records (EMR) should allow for story capture.

Oh well. OK, I'll get off my soap box now.

To really understand the beauty and the warts of EMR and its connection to storytelling, read this article. Maybe you'll be the one with the breakthrough idea and be the next mega-millionare for solving this problem!