If It Ain’t Broke, Should We Fix It?

DJ Smith / Mar 25th / Comments

I remember being in elementary school and having my teacher call on two students to go beat out the chalk dust from her chalkboard erasers. It was so exciting to be one of the chosen two. We had this very large rock near the far back of the school grounds that seemed like a mountain. We would take erasers to this rock and beat the daylights out of them. Clouds of chalk dust went everywhere. That poor rock looked like it had a horrible disease by the time we got through with it. It’s also a wonder we didn’t come back to the classroom looking like chalky ghosts. But we did our job happily and returned the erasers back to the teacher.

Wait, I just dated myself, didn’t I? That’s right, my teacher used chalkboards for her presentations. We didn’t have SMART Boards or even dry-erase boards. Certainly, PowerPoint didn’t exist. My son, who is in elementary school, hasn’t told me that he’s been asked to beat marker dust off the dry erase board eraser. The fact is technology changes things around us on a daily basis.

French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” While some technology serves to open new horizons that humankind has yet to explore, a great deal serves to either solve problems with existing methods of doing something or enhance what we’ve previously been doing. Take the way we make presentations. Early on, if you wanted to make a dynamic presentation, the chalkboard was your best option. The problem was that it took time to erase one thought and write out your next. So, technology advanced to provide slides loaded into a carousel in a slide projector. The problem there was a risk of slides being loaded incorrectly or you were tethered to the projector. Innovators answered the call again and created a way for us to control the slides via a computer through programs such as PowerPoint. We can even add motion and sound to the presentations, making them more lively and persuasive. It’s quite a distance from the chalkboards of long ago, and no doubt we’ll soon be looking at PowerPoint as an archaic means of making presentations. Was there anything wrong with the chalkboard approach to making presentations? Not really, but aren’t you glad that we no longer have to rely on that technology to communicate?

As the call comes to embrace new technologies, there is often a thought of “if it isn’t broke why fix it?” Often this sentiment is the result of a fear of having to learn something new. The headaches that come as the result of breaking out of our comfort zone hardly seems worth the effort. Just look at EMR implementation – the thought causes many providers to shudder. But comfort zones don’t make you more efficient nor do they improve the service you provide. Old comfort zones stagnate and breed complacency.

Will technology require an investment in learning a new system? Yes. Will it mean you have to find a new normal? Yes. Will it mean you need to invest in an aspirin manufacturer? Possibly. But it will also mean that you will be more efficient in your daily tasks. It will mean that you can see a greater number of patients or improve the quality of service you provide your clients. Technologies don’t advance us only to fatten the pockets of the innovator. Technologies advance because from the dawn humankind there has been drive within us to push the race forward. Before you dismiss new advancements in medicine, marketing, practice management or any other sector of the healthcare industry, consider how far we’ve come. Embrace the technologies that improve you and push you forward. After all, stagnant water isn’t fit to drink.