With all the forms we have in this world, you would think one or two of them would be complete and perfect in every way, but there is always something missing. I wonder what Britons would have done if the ballot on this past week’s vote to leave the European Union contained an option marked “I Don’t Care Either Way?”
Recently I made a doctor appointment which required me to get lab work done. The nurse mailed me the form, which contained a laundry list of coded items with the important ones checked off. I dutifully went to the lab ready to gush the red fount of medical knowledge into a tube for the happy technicians who need a few of the things each day to stay employed. The first question the technician asked was, “Did you fast this morning?”
For the past several tests, I fasted and was told I didn’t have to. I struck out this time. Yet the form, for all its neat columns of numbers and abbreviations, didn’t have one marked “Fasting Required” for the patient’s enlightenment.
Then, of course, the patient doesn’t need to know anything on the form, do they? Just stroll like an obedient sheep into the holding pen and let the nice phlebotomist prod away (except if you had to fast first).
So many things can be done on tablets or other computers, but paper forms remain such a part of society that we have taken for granted the notion that they cannot ever be made better. We settle for what is out there, and a lot of it is shoddy. It isn’t always a matter of automating the paperwork, but of simplifying it. If any one human being has to do all umpteen tests available on one form, they would probably need hospitalization. Just do one for this, one for that, and a miscellaneous one for the others; automate the first two and leave the third on paper, where the print will be larger and there will be room for that missing check box.
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