Clinical faux pas
It's been a busy couple of days at work. I had a mild headache all day yesterday, partly because of my period, but I think also because of the yoga and hiking I did over the weekend in the Brecon Beacons. At the end of the day I was writing in the wrong times on the prescriptions I was checking, ie we're supposed to write the time we finished checking the script, which people pointed out to me later. This made me feel foolish, and also reminded me of the errors that doctors make when they write out prescriptions. It also made me worry slightly about my state of mind, and how I cope under stress. But then I put it out of my mind, it was just timing, after all.
But then today, it was another busy day, and towards the end of the day, at around 4.30pm, I was asked to screen a discharge prescription. This was no ordinary script, this was a script two pages long with 20 items on it. But really all I had to do was make sure what was on the presciption matched up to what the patient had been taking as an inpatient, ie on their drug chart. But somehow I had made two mistakes: endorsing one item to be taken in the morning when the chart said in the evening, and missing one discrepancy - the Dr had written down a different strength on the prescription to what was on the drug chart. Which was really quite a serious mistake, if it had not been checked by another pharmacist, which would have been a real possibility, the prescription would have reached the patient flawed, by me - me and the doctor, I suppose, but it doesn't feel that way. What excuse did I have? None. A more thorough, careful and together person would have caught it. I suppose there are two types of people in the world, the type which makes lots of mistakes, and the ones who just don't. I suppose if not making mistakes came more naturally to me then I would generally be more successful in my life. I suppose it's all part of being quicker and smarter as well, I've noticed that I just can't talk as well as some, I'm just not quick witted enough. And so that explains a bit as well. At least I haven't tried to ingratiate myself with any of my new colleagues then, I think if I keep everything professional between everybody then when I cock up it will hopefully be less humiliating. When I think back to when I was working at the Liverpool Women's Hospital, I tried really hard to win over my fellow locum pharmacist, but she shot me down. Partly, I think, because she's not particularly sociable, but I think a lot of it was to do with the way I clinically faux pas-ed a lot. Oh well. What can I do? I'm too long in the tooth to do much more about it anymore. Try harder next time, I suppose. I think I might try to lie low for a while.