Please, for the love of God...

[mbpark]

Hello,

I work on a regular basis with non-technical people, and one of my assignments is Healthcare IT, where I work as a technical architect/DBA/SysAdmin. I work with a small team of 5 people running a large portion of the application infrastructure for a local health system.

The ONLY reason we get anything done is by not complaining about our customers. We focus on our assignments, and making sure that our customers are satisfied. We provide a copious amount of documentation, and think like our customers do in terms of user experience and customer satisfaction.

Healthcare, for most companies that aren't Big Pharma, is a non-profit industry. The IT staff is usually treated like the cost center (read: drains on profit) that they are if they don't treat the customers right and help on finding ways to streamline the workflow and save money.

The only way to move up and get your department funded is to get your projects done on time, and be courteous/helpful to your customers, so that your group gets funded for the next group of projects. If you focus on ways to help them and the business, you will help the overall objective of better patient care.

If you complain about the customers and treat them in a condescending manner, instead of realizing that there are major skill differences between you and them (and that they are very good at things which you are not good at, like finance or patient care), you will get less done and they will dislike you greatly.

If you worked in the organization I work at, chances are your customers would have called our group already, and we would have been working with them to get the job done instead. Sorry, but business is business.