Keep things simple, guys! « erdoc: chronicles of an ER doc and his palm

Friday, December 10, 2004

Keep things simple, guys!

Recent locum shift at another local hospital, during a resuscitation...

erdoc: Okay, let's get a 12-lead now guys...
nurse: hang on, the ecg machine is booting...
erdoc: ...er what? booting?
nurse: yeah (unhappilly)
erdoc: ECG machines don't boot like computers, you just turn them on, and they run...

nurse: errr... this one does... it runs windows...
erdoc: you mean...
nurse: yep, some idiot decided it was a good idea. At the time. Personally we all hate it...

I mean, what is it with these idiots... do they EVER field test their products? We use them, not flipping MCSE dime-a-dozen 'engineers' or 'IT specialists' whatever moniker they go under these days(engineers my flipping big toe).

WHO THE HELL NEEDS FLIPPING WINDOWS ON AN ECG MACHINE????!!!!!!!

Posted at 06:45 pm by erdoc


	erdoc December 12, 2004 09:28 PM PST fortunately our oxylogs (portable vents) have their own dedicated hardware/software solution :) It's really amazing to find out what's actually running inside your life/mission critical equipment. I am told the NASA shuttle's total computing power is provided by a 286 and there's no C++ OOPS stuff 'cos of the potential of badly written code... ie memory leaks... and underlying inefficiencies of the paradigm - late binding etc....


	Palmdoc December 12, 2004 10:16 AM PST Nect we'll see defibrillators CRASHING at most unfortunate times because they run on Windoze......... :P

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