Big job ahead

I am in my first full week in the ER and I've already discovered in the past week and a half that I'm going to have my work cut out for me! The pharmacy department is definitely not like the one I left behind. It takes multiple phone calls to get medicines from point A to point B, with point B being the ER. The inefficiency drives me crazy! I've already met with ED nursing and pharmacy management to see if we can change some of the processes, to try to cut down on phone calls. As always - data, data, data. Another thing that is different here is that when a doctor enters an order for a medicine to start at a certain time, I can't just change it like I did in Yakima. I have to "reject" the initial order, call the doctor, and have them re-enter it for the correct starting time. That's getting really old fast! I can understand the value of training them to pay attention to such things but it's very time-consuming for me. The ED physicians have been great and have went out of their way to get me set up with everything I need. Soon I'll have electronic devices hanging off of every side of my body :-) I'm getting to know the nurses too, and slowly I'm learning their names. The ER keeps a lot of "boarders," so it's not unusual for a patient to be in the ER for over 24 hours, waiting for a bed upstairs. I'd say at this point my time has been split fairly evenly between entering orders for ER boarding patients, pestering the residents who entered the orders incorrectly, and tracking down meds that were never sent. It seems like it will be a while before I can tackle any clinical-type projects because first we've got to get the drugs coming from pharmacy in a satisfactory fashion. Wish me luck and lots of patience!