W has been under the care of us for quite some years. To cut the medical information short, this time, she was the night before for some urinary infection. The problem was, one regular medication of hers was a new long-acting version, but, when she was admitted, she was prescribed with the ordinary short-acting form. This mistake, which I considered minor and entirely understandable, was noted and immediately rectified by the on-call physician that evening.
*********************
I talked to W, did a brief examination, and decided to go through her hospital notes and medication sheet - which, to my surprise, could not be found anywhere in the ward.
I asked the nursing officer, "Where's the medication sheet of this patient?"
"Oh, the incident last night was reported to AIRS," the ward sister was most apologetic, "The risk management people just come around and take away the case notes and medication sheet for detailed scrutiny ..." (For those not familiar with our system, AIRS stands for Advanced Incident Reporting System.)
"In this hour of the morning!?" I gasped, "Please go and tell them, I am now doing ward round and have the priority to look at the patients charts and records. The risk is real if they still keep all those documents at this critical moment!"
The nursing officer hurried away. I did not have a chance to elaborate the risk I mentioned was to the patient or some other extra-terrestrials.
No comments:
Post a Comment