W13: kicking off the learning curve
I'm admittedly a big keyboard fan. I currently use a nice mechanical keyboard I had custom-built long ago; I don't game at all, but I do type a lot, and that's just at home. Just imagine how many lines of medical records a psychiatrist has to type every single day...
I can touch-type on QWERTY at about 55 WPM, which is about the average typing speed for a physician. I can also touch-type on Dvorak (not any faster though), which can be a small help to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome in the long term; a colleague of mine intends to use that alternative layout at work for this very reason.
I have something different in mind. This week I received my order of a CharaChorder Two, an input device that could be described as an ergonomic, programmable, hybrid chorded and non-chorded keyboard. It could also be described as the mother of all input device learning curves, with people reportedly reaching 300, even 500 WPM after over a year of training; at those speeds, I could easily shave off precious minutes and annoying interruptions every time I see a patient, allowing me to focus on my job and my patients, and avoiding delays. An investment in time that I'm confident in recovering soon.
On a different note, I'm already pre-inscribed for a Master's Degree in Biomedical Engineering, as well as steadily studying for a driver's license and doing daily language lessons on Duolingo (I'm learning French at the moment).