Categories: uncategorized
Date: 17 September 2006 07:45:17
On Friday afternoon at work, I was merrily working when the screen went black and then the message "non system disk or disk error" flashed up. To cut a long story short the hard drive had died.
I had six hours of work still to go, the software people hadn't given us a re-install disk so I couldn't install the dispensing software on any other computers and it was Friday night so there was not much that could be done. The computer company is replacing the hard drive and the software company is sending us the software. But this won't happen til Tuesday. The pharmacy is open 13 hours/day, 7 days per week. So that's over 50 hours without a dispensing computer. Also whichever company installed the computer hadn't given us a Windows re-install disk. So even if we'd bought a new hard drive and managed to borrow a dispensing software disk from another pharmacy (impossible as it turned out because no-one else had been given one either), it would have been useless without an operating system.
The helpful software people told me that if I wanted the software before Tuesday I could send someone to pick it up on Monday (the busiest day of the week). "erm so I send the ONE shop assistant, leaving the ONE pharmacist dispensing everything by hand (ie. hand writing all labels and repeat forms) for THREE HOURS, plus dealing with the Monday morning methadone client rush, because you guys are too cheap to send it by courier??"... yep!
My boss gets back from holidays tomorrow. Hehe he's going to be happy.
Something that I have learnt from the experience is the importance of regularly checking your back up procedures - backing up is good, but in the event of a total system crash, do you have everything you need to restore it??
Another thing that I've been pondering is how we are being forced to become more dependent on computers. For example in Australian pharmacies, we all have a Yellow Book that tells us the stipulated prices for medications and various regulations related to their subsidisationg - the pricing info is built into the dispensing programs but sometimes a bit of extra info is needed. The Govt department that provides it has decided that the book will only be available online unless you opt in to hard copy and pay them money. Now don't get me wrong, I like the online version and use it frequently BUT the time when you most need the Yellow Book is when your computer is down. Oh! and where will the Yellow Book be then? Online!! Oh! This is a problem!
In short, computers are great but they break. And electricity delivery depends on intact wires. And is providing a not overly large book, printed on bog standard paper, to a few thousand businesses, three times per year really that much of a budget destroyer?
I would like to discuss this with the relevant er person. But I can't quite figure it out. See all the details are online. Apparently. Somewhere. You just email firstname.lastname@somewhereorother. But who!?!