I recently spent the night at our local Hospital with my son Bradley who had a very badly infected toe. He is doing well and acting like a normal 6yr old even without his toenail. While we were there I had the strangest experience with getting him Tylenol. Apparently now they have this new automated medication dispenser for the nurses. They scan the doctors orders, type in the patient Id, scan their badge, and viola the medicine pops out. Sounds great huh? That is what I thought until I experienced the fatal flaw in a machine not being able to think like a human. A machine has no compassion or reasoning.
It was after pharmacy hours when Bradley began to hurt badly as the swelling was increasing. We contacted his nurse who said she would bring him some Tylenol soon. An hour later she comes in the room with no medicine for my child who by now was crying in pain, to tell us that the machine does not have the proper dose and will not give the medicine. There was tylenol in this machine, but not measured out in two teaspoons. There was only one teaspoon doses. It wouldn't give her two of the one to make up his dose. She leaves me assuring that she will figure out something.
After another hour and a half goes by she comes in and tells me that she couldn't contact his physician to have him change his does so she could at least give him one teaspoon at a time, but assures me she will bring him Tylenol soon. Another 30 minutes later she comes in with a box of medicine from the local Walgreens and gives him two teaspoons of it.
Now granted I appreciate that she went through the trouble to go buy him some medicine since the system in place at the hospital clearly failed my child, but the fact that he was in pain for over two hours before anything was done is ridiculous. It was amazing to me to see a Nurse that truly cared about his suffering and went above and beyond to help him, but it scares me how much is left up to technology today. What if it had been a more serious medication that the machine was out of? I'm all for technology, but come on that's a little much. There should have at least been one person on staff in the pharmacy all night to make sure the stock of medication could be accessed. At the very least the machine should have been fully stocked before the hospital pharmacy closed for the night!