A lesson learned

Learned a lesson a little while ago. I've always been a very independent thinker. Always on my own and argued my point very aggressively when I thought necessary (which in my youth was often) Thinking it was a battle I never conceded defeat. My current place of employment has challenged that aspect of me greatly. There have been times when I've taken things into my own hands and have been labeled a "Cowboy". From my perspective, even though I informed everyone of what I was doing I was still a non-team player because I did it on my own. This really bothered me because we are short staffed and I did fix the solution and shared my knowledge so one would think things would be good. This has been the cause of a great deal of frustration and reflection for me. The situation kept repeating and each time I did what I felt strongly was the right thing and each time I would fix the issue and alienate the same people. I was very tempted to say "screw them, if they're too insecure to recognize help then they can kiss my Butt!"

We just went live with a new application in our operating room. I'm and IT guy and my main responsibility is to get this new OR Application running properly. I was in at 5 AM because that is when patients start to arrive and the staff starts to prepare for the days operations. First thing we discover is that printing isn't working. Apparently the patients information is printing at another location and the other locations print jobs are printing in OR. This is not good and has a negative impact on patient care. It's early morning and there are no other IT folks around to help. So I switched printers. Now in a standard It environment this would have worked. In this case it did not and I made the situation worse. Noe there are nurses upset, some patients upset and no print jobs. I was able to get a work around but it required some extra effort on the nurses. Fortunately they were able to work with me for until we could fix the issue.

My stomach was in knots and I was very upset. I did some research and knew how to fix the problem but couldn't because I did not have the rights. I had to go to the people who thought of me as a "cowboy" and inform them of my mistake and ask for help. This went against every grain of my body. I fought with this (and I mean fought) for a good while. There was a way I could patch it and know one would know the better but it wasn't the right way. I felt the fear of being wrong and/or being discovered. It felt terrible and lonely. I was soooo tempted to not let anyone know and go on my merry way. I finally decided to let them know and ask for help. As one would guess they were not too happy and on top of that it took them some time to fix it which made the situation a little worse. After 3 hours it was fixed.

I was glad that I was able to overcome my ego and fear. I was greatly relieved and realized this was a lesson for me on many levels. Looking back I feel that all of those other incidents were preparation for me for this incident.

Blessings