Anyone who works in health care today knows that many medical records are kept electronically.  I am used to 20 minute segments once in awhile when the system is down.  Today I had a surprise the system was down the whole time I was in the hospital, which was six hours.

The irony of the outage is that today I was supposed to train a new member of our team how to make entries in the electronic health record.  So much for that plan!  We were able to take my patient list from the previous day and make visits.  Of course we had to check with each nursing unit to see what changes in patient bed assignments had taken place since the previous day.  In order to keep my notes clear, since I used black ink on Thursday, I used red ink today.  This may sound messy but I was surprised how easy it was to tell which notes applied each of the visits.

The beauty of the change in plans is that we visited with patients we probably would not have seen if the computers had been working.  Through some of the conversations it was evident the patient/family benefited from the visit.  In the end I am behind in training and document entry, but more patients were given pastoral care that they benefited from.  Our patients frequently deal with changes in plans for their tests and procedures.  Through having my plans so significantly changed I saw the change in plans the patients experience in a new way.  I think today’s experience will help me relate with patients in the future when they are concerned about delays in their health care plan.  Have you had an experience when circumstances beyond your control forced you to do something you would not have normally been doing?  How did it work for you?  Please respond and together we can see examples of how we can be flexible in our ministry as chaplains.