Ten Thousand Spoons

Summer is coming to an end.  That means I have benchmark exams coming up.  As with most major exams, these play a big role in the near future.  If I fail a section, I'll be forced to do remediation, which would be both unpleasant and probably unnecessary in the long run.  I learn best by experience.  Unless something is really drilled into my head, I have to use it for me to know it's worthwhile to know it.

In certain things, like Latin and calculus, I tend to forget certain lesser details but maintain enough work around knowledge to get by until a major need arises.  This cannot be the case in pharmacy.  As it turns out, the average pharmacists I meet have forgotten a significant amount of the details.  That's unfortunate, since details are very important in medicine.  Almost all if not all medication errors could be prevented if every pharmacist knew everything they're supposed to know and actively practiced it.  Just volunteering at a hospital this summer I've heard of mistakes that have made it past several people all the way to the patient because people just fail to pay attention.

The sad part is that, really, everyone is trained to be vigilant and the pharmacists were given all the information they need to either know or look up information.  They should be doing this for every patient, not just those that jump out at them as looking odd.  It's ironic that we should have all these precautions to prevent errors and then they're ignored for the sake of a faster rate of turnover time.

I've been helping to analyze the turnover times as part of my volunteer experience.  What I've noticed is that unless there are major time constraints on an order, it has plenty of time to get to the floor.  The drugs from these orders are reaching the floor much too fast for adequate surveillance.  The great irony of sacrificing accuracy for speed is that the entire point of the pharmacy is to prevent errors with medications, not to get drugs to places quickly.  If that were the point there would be no need for pharmacists as a profession.

I worry that as our medical system becomes more burdened this will only get worse.  Sure, technology often steps in to help with accuracy, but that usually just results in making people more lazy about checking what they're doing or trying to find a way to circumvent the protections to, yet again, save time.  Time may be of the essence, but surely we can agree that it isn't all that makes up the essence.