Ok, so it’s obviously been a long time (almost 8 months, in fact, mostly due to not having internet access at my apartment) but yesterday was just so blogworthy, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I walked into the pharmacy at 2pm. The wait time was already more than an hour. (We’re not that busy a store, but I had a new pharmacist and two new techs working without a cashier.) By an hour in, this was up to 90 minutes.
Then, all horsehockey started breaking loose. We had some kind of crash (I’m still not sure whether it was a power outage or what) in the server room. This means:
- The IVR system went down, so no “press 1 for this.” It also means no faxes coming in, since our IVR system handles those as well.
- Our central database connection (with other stores) went down, so we couldn’t update patient profiles.
- And finally, we lost the ability to print labels, so we were essentially dead in the water.
It didn’t help that I still had to do the order (we had about 20 prescriptions on order for yesterday. When I started opening the totes, I almost started to cry. I knew that my employer had decided to force ordering of larger quantities on Top 200 drugs, but they were supposed to use a 1:1 ratio (i.e.order 5 100-ct. bottles, get 1 500-ct. bottles). Instead, I got 5 500-ct bottles, along several 1000-ct. bottles of other drugs. I got 3 1000-ct. bottles of KCl 20mEq, which, if you’ve never seen them, are bigger than footballs, and weigh about 15 pounds each.
I was at wits end at this point, and I said a word that I almost never say: “F@%K” (I can’t actually bring myself to type the word on a blog post; that’s how little I curse).
Between the computer troubles and what felt like an insurmountable goal of finishing the order (about half of it will be sent back), I couldn’t see any way we would survive the day. But, I took a deep breath, called a time out, and we started coming up with a game plan. I put one tech on the register, one tech filling the prescriptions that we DID have labels for, and I focused on checking in the order.
Once the order was finally put up, I called helpdesk to get an update on the server issues, and they finally got my printers working. So I kept one tech on the register, one filling, and I started typing the 50 or so prescriptions that we had received since the printers went down. This was about 5:00, so we were still telling people to come back the next day. Of course that made a few people angry, but they tend to give you a little bit of leeway when you mention the phrase “fatal system crash.”
Finally, by about 7:00, that pile of 50 was being finished off.
So, when 8:00 finally came around, I was able to start giving 20 minute wait times, instead of tomorrow. I never thought that would happen. I figured we’d be there an hour past closing (9pm) finishing up.
I guess the point of all this is that, yes, things will go wrong in the pharmacy, sometimes terribly wrong. But if you face it with a game plan, stay organized, and remain optimistic, you will get through it.
