Too Much of the Wrong Stuff

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We have a really nice problem at the moment; too many doctors. Well, not too many for all the patients that we need to see, but too many for the wards. With 2 docs on each ward, we have 2 left over! Bill is swamped with administrative work, so that frees him to do that. Last week, he asked me, since I had less than 2 weeks until furlough anyway, to do some work in the pharmacy.

We receive a lot of donated medicine. This is a valuable resource that most of the hospitals in PNG don't have. At times when the govermnemt's medical supply system is out of medicines, most of the hospitals here just have to do without. We almost always have something useful to teat our patients. Hundreds of great people give medicines obtained from many different sources.

However, sometimes we get medicines that we can't use for various reasons. Some are for conditions that are rare here. Some can only be used in very specialized ways, with special monitoring, or with blood tests that we can't do. Some are common meds that we have a reliable supply of, but the donated ones are a bit too old to use. Some meds are only used in chronic, ongoing treatment, and we receive donations in such small quantities that we can't even get someone started on a treatment regimen.

The pharmacy will be moving into the new building in a few weeks, and we really don't want them to have to move a lot of useless medicine. We need to get it sorted now, the good stuff made easy to find, and the useless eliminated now. Problem is, many of these meds are not familiar to our pharmacy staff. Plus, they are very busy with the routine functions of getting medicines dispensed.

So for the moment the pharmacy is my "ward". I'm going through thousands of containers of medicines, throwing away what is too old to use, or is unlikely to ever be used. I'm making a few happy discoveries ("oh, I didn't know we had any of that!") along the way, and making a list of the useful things that we have that we could be utilizing. It also makes me sad that we are still receiving some donations that we can't use. People are putting hard work into collecting and packing these items, and spending money on sending them.

What's the answer? Well, for one thing, if you are involved with sending us donated medicines, please don't quit! Just be sure that what you are sending meets a need here. Make sure the list of needed meds is a current one. If you have questions, please ask!

And thank you for your help!

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