Flo and Friends by Jenny Campbell for February 17, 2025

Good At Reading Vitals As Long As Reading Isn’t Vital

I work in IT for a small hospital in the middle of nowhere in the southwestern region of the US. I’ve come to realize that doctors and nurses are really knowledgeable about the human body but not so much about computers. There is a lot of hand-holding involved.

Today, a student nurse called me with my favorite problem: “I can’t log into the computer.”

This one drives us all crazy. We have Active Directory running but also various medical programs that can’t be hooked into AD, so almost everyone has at least two logins to remember. (I love it when users complain about having “so many passwords to remember”. Come work in IT! We have even more!)

After five months in this position, I know that when users call with this complaint, I need to ask them right away:

Me: “Are you trying to log into Windows or [Electronic Medical Record program (EMR)]?”

User: “Windows.”

Me: “Then I’m going to reset your network password.”

I log into AD, have her verify her identity including her login name, unlock her account, reset the password, and give her the default password.

User: “Okay, thanks. So, what do I put in when it asks for the server info?”

Me: “Wait. What do you mean, ‘server info’?”

[User] then describes the login screen for our EMR software.

Me: “Oh. You’re trying to log into the EMR. Give me a moment, and I’ll reset that password for you.”

I log into that system, reverify her identity, reset her password, give her the IP address the EMR was asking for, and have her try to log in.

I can hear [User] mumbling as she types.

User: “Okay, so [Network Login Name] here and [default password for EMR] here.”

Me: “Wait a minute. You need to use your EMR username to log into the EMR program.”

Silence.

User: “What?”

Me: “You know the login name you gave me when I was resetting your EMR password? Use that name.”

(contd)