R-E-S-P-E-C-T

First, if you'll bear with me, a little background.

USP 797 is a regulation impacting any pharmacy that makes "compounded sterile products," for example, intravenous drips and medications, extemporaneous ophthalmics, epidurals for pain control, and so on. If you're interested in reading more about it, or just in need of a good snooze, click here: http://www.usp797.org/

Our hospital pharmacy has been undergoing an enormous remodelling effort to bring our rather large IV room into compliance with USP 797. The construction commenced back in early March. In the meantime, all our equipment and IV personnel have been crammed into what was our lunchroom, a space roughly 1/6 the size of the original work area. The environmental consequences have been remarkably unpleasant, as the four hoods, three refrigerators, two computers and anywhere from three to seven human beings put off more heat than the cooling system can handle. We all have to be masked, bonnetted, bootied, gloved and dressed out in scrubs while we work in there, thus adding to the misery. That heat migrates like a polluted miasma throughout the adjacent part of the pharmacy, which is also remarkably cramped and noisy. It's been a somewhat challenging place to spend 8 to 12 hours a day for quite a while, and our collective nerves are frayed.

Anyone who has remodelled a space knows that no matter how thoroughly you think you've planned the project, there are always surprises. There have been some big ones involved here, most spectacularly the HVAC issues, but I'll spare you that story. The point of all this is to share the adventure that was my shift on Tuesday evening. Even by second shift standards, it was hell. At any given moment, we were at least 130-160 charts behind. The phones would not stop ringing. I was the IV room pharmacist, so I was responsible for keeping an eye on a newbie IV technician who continually failed to meet the expectations I clearly laid out for him at the start of shift, and who also couldn't keep his damn drawers up. Drawer droop is not good aseptic technique! Visible ass-crack is sexual harassment. Ah, well, that got turned over to a higher power, and it's really not the point I'm striving to make. I just had to vent a little.

So..... Along about 11PM, which should have been my quitting time, two construction workers showed up to drain a water line so it could be re-routed to the Clean Room area of the newly remodelled IV room. (That was the latest afterthought. Water. Gee.) Gomer and Cletus had no idea it was pressurized. They also had no idea it was 180 degrees. They had no way to turn off said pressurized hot water after they drilled a hole in the pipe directly above our counter full of computers, where the four of us were furiously trying to whittle away at that horrendous backlog of orders. The ensuing torrent was spectacular.

Thankfully, no computers were harmed. Only one pharmacist got sprayed, and the water wasn't hot enough to scald her through her clothes. And my concern for the guys that were by then desperately trying to contain the spray of hot water in a plastic bucket kind of evaporated when one of them showed me a gap-toothed grin and called me:


Darlin'