Category: None of the above

“I`m back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend” – Gene Autry

It was 49 days between the time I was unceremoniously released from duty as a product manager by my previous employer until I finally went back to work. You can see my thoughts on my search for a job here.

On Thursday, September 12, 2013 I found myself in familiar territory as I reported for duty as a per diem IT Pharmacist at Kaweah Delta Medical Center. The position calls for two shifts a week. It’s a start.

For those of you that don’t know, Kaweah Delta is where I got my start as an IT Pharmacist back in November 2007. the idea of an IT Pharmacist was new and it was an exciting time. I spent about three years at Kaweah Delta implementing technology and automation left and right. I was fortunate to have been involved with a pharmacy remodel, smart pump implementation, BCMA implementation, the first stages of CPOE implementation, the early stages of mobile technology, among other things. It was also during that time that I started experimenting with this blog and social media. I learned a lot during my time at Kaweah Delta. They were good to me, but I left in 2010 to explore other opportunities.

When I left Kaweah Delta in 2010 the IT Pharmacy department was one person, me. Since that time they’ve grown the service to include 2.5 full-time pharmacists and a full-time pharmacy technician. They’ve done a lot of good things since 2010, and thankfully they’re doing a lot more. They are currently preparing to implement the NEPS Labeling Solution for their labeling needs as well as implementing DoseEdge in their IV room. Fortunately for me they ran out of bodies to do all the work and were contemplating hiring another pharmacist when I made contact in search of employment. Timing is everything they say.

I won’t lie, the first two days in the “new” position were a bit humbling. I felt like the kid that went away to college at the big university only to find out that he couldn’t make it and had to return home and start over at the local junior college. I am now at the bottom of the very ladder of which I used to sit atop. My excursion into the world outside the pharmacy walls has literally cost me six years of career path time, i.e. I’m right where I was in November of 2007. Actually, that’s not true. In the strictest sense I’m in a position lower than I was in November 2007.  So in reality it’s more like ten years of career path time, unless pharmacy career time is like dog years. In that case I should be ok unless I have the dog years thing backward, at which point I’m screwed.

Everyone at Kaweah Delta has been great. I’ve had to explain my situation to several people, but no one has openly mocked me yet, which I believe the pharmacist code allows. Regardless of all that, it feels good to be back in the saddle again.

You know what’s missing in healthcare? Pharmacists that write code and work on application development, that’s what’s missing. It’s the only way to ensure that applications have the right look, feel and functionality. Who knows better than a pharmacist, or pharmacy technician, how a pharmacy application should behave? No one, that’s who. Trying to explain healthcare workflow to a non-healthcare person is like trying to explain calculus to a dog; not that I think people outside healthcare are dogs. It’s just a metaphor.

Anyone can learn to code the basics, much the same way anyone can learn the basics of being a pharmacist. I could teach an average sixth grader how to perform the basic functions of a pharmacist; no lie. Of course things get a lot more complicated once you get past the basics, and that’s when you need people with more experience, expertise and wisdom.

I’ve dabbled in “programming” here and there, mostly out of necessity. At one time or another I’ve taught myself to code with visual basic, C# and some scripting languages like Javascript, PERL, and HTML. I also spent a couple years learning the ins and outs of database design and writing queries. But I was never all that good at it. I could do the basics, but it was neither my profession nor passion.

I wrote a couple of small apps to help me do my job – desktop and web-based – and built some databases to handle pharmacokinetic tracking and pharmacist interventions. Everything worked, but they were nothing that would have wowed anyone. What I needed was someone with a lot more experience to take those applications and turn them into something spectacular. That’s where having a real “programmer” would come in handy; someone with years of experience, expertise and wisdom.

However, back to my original point. Healthcare needs pharmacists that know how to write code to jump start the development process and drive things forward when things stall. Sometimes pictures and words simply don’t work.

Just an opinion. Take it for what it worth.

The news that Google Reader is going to be sunset in July of this year has created somewhat of a panic among many, including myself.  The internet has been abuzz with articles on potential replacements. I’m sure people will look at many of these and find something to meet their needs, but what I’ve found thus far has been disappointing. I assume that’s because Google Reader was truly more than just a RSS aggregation tool for me.  A lot of the functionality that I used was the result of many third party developers that wrote plugins and scripts to do everything from rearranging the information on the page to removing ads. Google Reader was popular and mature, and it showed.

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Mobile Health Computing: “Electronic devices that are smaller than a standard laptop can stay in your bag. There is no need to pull them out. The TSA told us this back in 2010.” Good to know.

I was told by TSA that anything with an SSD (vs. a standard HD) can remain in your bag; iPad, Android tablet, eReader, etc. I tried to apply this logic to my laptop, but it didn’t work. The TSA is inconsistent with how they apply the rules. I only travel about 20 times a year, but it can be different from one airport to another. Most handle things the same way, but it’s not 100% across the board.
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I travel for work a couple of weeks a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. Most of the time I travel by myself, but recently I found myself traveling, albeit briefly, with another pharmacist. He and I ended up in a little pub one night talking about work; products, strategy, gripes, likes, and so on. Typical stuff when two guys get together and talk about work. After a while the conversation turned away from work and toward pharmacy in general. Just two guys talking about stuff that’s interesting.

A few drinks and several bowls of popcorn later we had covered a lot of interesting pharmacy topics including acute care pharmacy operations, telepharmacy, medication therapy management, insurance company billing, specialty pharmacy practice and so on. There were several interesting ideas figurative sketched out on the back of a napkin that night. This type of comradery is good for the creative process as I’ve mentioned before.

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