It is another Sunday. I am getting bored, I mean already bored of Brunei. I miss my life in NZ. My exciting life there with friends, colleagues and also the many things NZ has to offer. Strictly speaking, Brunei as a wealthy country should be developed at least like Singapore. I wish for more shopping malls with franchise from all over the world, entertainment like karaoke and club, more places of interest, better road signs, MRT so we don't have to worry about looking for parking spaces which also will help to reduce road accident and air pollution. Also, a webpage should be created to inform the public about events happening in Brunei. Even though I said all these, Brunei is still a great country to live in. It provides free education, scholarship, cheap fuels, tax-free, free healthcare, subsidised rice, cars and so much more.
There is another thing I am extremely NOT satisfied with is the non-existence of OT pay in the pharmacy department. We work our asses off till 6.30 the latest and believe me, that extra 2 hours are free labour. It is already pretty bad to mention our pay is the same as those who only study for a shorter period of time. I should just be a dietitian - same pay and better working hours. I am sick of calling doctors and this is not a simple task. We have to call from one place to another to locate them. And we had to wait for them to ammend the scripts before we can do anything. Doctors! Please check your prescriptions carefully! Some doctors are very nice and efficient though.
A question was raised yesterday why we always go home late and why morning scripts are only being done in the afternoon
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1) Our cut-off time for script is 4.15pm (for inpatient) and 4 pm (for discharges). So presciptions from that time onwards till the next day will only be done the next morning. By the time I start to do the NEW prescriptions, it is already 2-3 pages.
2) Scripts that need amendment. We have a hard time locating the doctors. There is also waiting time for them to change or authorise the script. Some of them don't even change it till the next day or even worse, forget about it. I feel like a mother having to tend the children all the time, making sure they are doing the right things. If only doctors check their prescriptions carefully. Seriously, can we just relay all these messages to the nurse since there is a higher chance for them to meet the doctors.
4) Interrupted phone calls from nurses! When allocating, we always get called from nurses asking about "is the script done?" Honestly, we have taught you umpteen times that you go to patient drug profile and check!!! And some of them are not our fault. It's doctors who do it wrongly that's why we cannot dispense the discharge meds. It is fine that the phone calls are short but it is irritating when it rings after one another.
5) When a patient changes ward, and if the item is not their ward stock so it will come down to us and the time stated is the time when the script was prescribed instead of the time when the patient changes ward.
6) It also takes time to check patient's drug profile and patient's history like whether the patient is on NG tube or patient is going home and blablabla! There's always discrepancies between what is written in clinician note and what are being prescribed. Grrrr!
6) Allocating is not as easy as delivering. Even though I haven't delivered yet, I can tell you allocating can take really long because of the first and second points mentioned above.
7) IT and BRUHIMS! Lagging! believe it or not, it can take up to 30 seconds to refresh a page especially for regular where we have to check every single patient's script. There was a time it took more than 3 minutes to print labels! I know nothing is perfect but seriously, Bruhims can be improved a lot! Heard this issue was brought up to them but nothing can be done about it - once we press complete allocation or fill, we cannot go back even though we press cancel. Then we have to release batch again. Create more work for us. And we cannot have two windows side by side. If we were to go to another function, we are logged out of the one that we are doing and need to log in again. click here and there. Return meds are the worse! It creates more job for us! I wish there is a system where the nurse can click what they need for the patients instead of us supplying everything because if patients don't finish it, they return them to us and we have to input each and every med into the computer and put them back to the shelves.
8) Doctors should have a way to know it is a NPB med and call us to ask if it is approved and then get a specialist or SMO to authorise it.
To be honest, if the script has no problem like no need to call doctors, we can do it very fast even if there are 5 pages.
The only things I like about BRUHIMS are no need to write manually patients' names and expiry dates. Also, we don't have to "fill in the blank" on the labels.
-----To be continued.
