How to Proceed After Major Mistake at New Job (verification, analysis, work from home)
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I recently got a job with a health system that involves data analysis and project performance tracking. My first day, I was given unrestricted access to several programs I would be expected to use on a daily basis, including the medical records system. I also received a company laptop to work from home.
The training on my duties has been somewhat disorganized and I received no thorough training on operating the medical records system. However, I was taught by the person who manages the system how to create/modify queries. I was also told it was fine for me to create and run queries, so long as I did not modify existing queries, and made copies under my own initials for queries I was interested in.
After my second week, which was this weekend, I worked to develop a query that would assist in a project we need data that has not previously been pulled. I copied the two existing queries we currently use for that project and added the data fields I needed from one query to the other. However, I didn't join the new tables I added correctly. This caused the query to pull an enormous amount of data.
I attempted to stop the query using the F12 button which is the UI cancel button. However, it failed to stop the query. So, I closed the program using the task manager, went back into the program and deleted my query. Well, apparently, the query never stopped running and continued to pull millions of records. This prompted my director to call me on Saturday and ask me to stop using the program until Monday, because the health system almost got taken down.
I am very disappointed that this had to happen so quickly into my role with this company, as I am putting in a lot of effort to learn a great deal of information. I also don't want to come off as one to shift blame, but I do feel like there was a lot that went wrong here that wasn't my fault, the system not having an automated kill switch after a given number of records has been pulled being chief among them. How should I approach any formal conversations about this?
he said to stop using it because it crashed their system, and they operate on the weekend. they can show you how to do it on monday or give you a shadow system to train on
not the first time a computer system went down in a hospital and wont be the last
why didnt you follow up with it after deleting query? if you knew something happened wrong, you dont leave it without checking to make sure it is working again <-- you were entirely to blame for not following up, training has nothing to do with this, this is a professional and life skill responsible people have, you shifting the blame to bad training does not negate this. learn to own up for your mistakes and see them through
if there would be a problem, it would be the records that got pulled, if they thought you were stealing them, hr/legal/police might be there too?
had you followed up right away, they would know it was an accident. without this, they dont know if you took those records on purpose. a quick call to someone saying hey i had a problem can you check if everything is working on your end would have found out the problem. instead you deleted query and walked away. deleting query could be "covering up" if you had intended to access those records
if you felt there should be a better kill switch, you can bring it up at a later time, it does not fix the current issue and that is what you have to fix first or there wont be a chance for a "later"
do i think you'll be fired? probably not depending on if the wrong feathers got ruffled or not. do i think you should have handled it better? yes
he said to stop using it because it crashed their system, and they operate on the weekend. they can show you how to do it on monday or give you a shadow system to train on
not the first time a computer system went down in a hospital and wont be the last
why didnt you follow up with it after deleting query? if you knew something happened wrong, you dont leave it without checking to make sure it is working again <-- you were entirely to blame for not following up, training has nothing to do with this, this is a professional and life skill responsible people have, you shifting the blame to bad training does not negate this. learn to own up for your mistakes and see them through
if there would be a problem, it would be the records that got pulled, if they thought you were stealing them, hr/legal/police might be there too?
had you followed up right away, they would know it was an accident. without this, they dont know if you took those records on purpose. a quick call to someone saying hey i had a problem can you check if everything is working on your end would have found out the problem. instead you deleted query and walked away. deleting query could be "covering up" if you had intended to access those records
if you felt there should be a better kill switch, you can bring it up at a later time, it does not fix the current issue and that is what you have to fix first or there wont be a chance for a "later"
do i think you'll be fired? probably not depending on if the wrong feathers got ruffled or not. do i think you should have handled it better? yes
I didn't follow up because I didn't know there was a problem. I knew the query wasn't correct, because I saw the amount of files it was pulling I just didn't know it was having consequences. I didn't really "walk away" as I deleted the query and then continued working on it to get it right. I was also able to continue pulling files, so I had no reason to believe other people couldn't.
In response to the accident thing, I'm not too worried about that. I identified myself as the creator of the query in the query name, and I was also working on a standard report for my position. One could also look at the definition of the first query that went wrong and see how I adjusted it in my next query to work as intended.
No one should ever be given unrestricted access to an EMR system. HIPAA concerns aside, people should be privileged to modules only needed for their jobs, and only to certain functions within the modules. If it is something that staff member doesn't use regularly, remove the privilege after they do what they need to do.
I'd say the large read caused degraded performance to the point the DB/DB server almost went down. Yes, you should have ensured the query was canceled, but it sounds like they need someone with better SQL skills. Even then, you do not just create new queries in production with no verification and run them.
Your EMR change control/security folks need to be fired.
Do you not also have access to a support or shadow environment? I always test new queries in that before building or migrating to prod. It's *never* a good idea to build directly in a live environment no matter how small the change seems to be.
So in response to one of the posts that asserted they need someone with greater sql skill - as I said, the program runs on a user interface without access to a terminal, so sql was not an option.
Apparently the reason I couldn't end the query, as unbelievable as this may sound, is that the only access that is restricted on my account is the ability to end a query. That can only be handled by IT. So if a situation like this occurs in the future the procedure is to contact whoever is on call for IT as there is no manual or automated kill switch.
There is no shadow server to train on. The only thing I can do is display a portion of the query and gauge how correct it is. Apparently this has happened in the past and the director was pretty understanding, just asked that I didn't experiment again until they have had their meeting with the server provider to discuss what happened, and what changes will be put in place.
So in response to one of the posts that asserted they need someone with greater sql skill - as I said, the program runs on a user interface without access to a terminal, so sql was not an option.
Apparently the reason I couldn't end the query, as unbelievable as this may sound, is that the only access that is restricted on my account is the ability to end a query. That can only be handled by IT. So if a situation like this occurs in the future the procedure is to contact whoever is on call for IT as there is no manual or automated kill switch.
There is no shadow server to train on. The only thing I can do is display a portion of the query and gauge how correct it is. Apparently this has happened in the past and the director was pretty understanding, just asked that I didn't experiment again until they have had their meeting with the server provider to discuss what happened, and what changes will be put in place.
None of this matters now u just need to take responcibilbity and learn from it
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