Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Week 2

I can't believe it's week 2 already! So how did I spend my second weekend in suva? I actually visited some relatives which was nice! My Mum was born in Suva so she has some distant relatives who are still living here. It was nice to have some home cooked indian food!

It's pouring rain in Suva at the moment....by pouring I mean sheets and sheets of rain, the sort of rain we only dream about in Melbourne! Today is the 4th consecutive day of torrential rain....and I think it's meant to last for at least another 3 days!

Today I worked at CWM hospital in the medical records department. I'm trying to collect data on my diabetes patients such as renal function and any other lab test results...I discovered that it's quite difficult to find this information! Medical records are not as user friendly.

The afternoon was spent attending the Central Eastern Divisional Drugs and Therapeutics Committee meeting. These meetings are held bi-monthly by each division (Western, Central Eastern and Southern divisions), and then each division will be represented at the National Drugs and Therapeutics Commiteee meeting the following month. Basically they discussed slow moving drugs and fast moving drugs at the hospital. They analysed drug expenditure and identifed areas where there may be inappropriate use of medications and potential for cost savings. For example, in the slow moving drugs they may have had Pralidoxime, an antidote for organophosphate poisoning, of which was only used very infrequently in one month. However antidotes like these need to be kept even though they are slow moving/expensive, in the event that there is such a medical presentation. So it's really all about cost/benefit analysis and making best use of available resources. Pharmacy representatives did a presentation on inappropriate prescribing and issues associated with meropenem and multi-drug resistance. The committee identified strategies to tackle these problems. It was very interesting to see how each department (micro, pharmacy, surgery, medical, health centre workers) all brought something unique to the meeting, to achieve quality use of medicines.

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