Dear Boss...

Dear Boss, CEO, COOs, and whoever-thought-the-project-was-good,

You are in need of serious rest, and I do mean rest. Just rock yourself in a rocking chair and stare into blank space, if you want some comic effect you can let some spit dribble out of your mouth. Apparently lack of rest has severely clouded your judgement. No use denying you made a faulty judgement. If you had thought pharmacy store and purchasing sections's FY2006 Quest@Work project deserving of an outstanding award you can either admit that tiredness has affected your judgement or claim to be an imbecile.

Let's look at the goal of this stupid project: to implement lean management so as to reduce stock holding by 20%, reduce expired goods by 10% and improve stock turnover in store by 10 turns per year. So you applaud them when they met the targets and think they are helping the hospital's bottom line by cutting down on expenditure and wastages.

What you did not know is that reduction of stock holding led to stock shortages at the frontline pharmacies. Consequently, we had to ration our stocks for our patients, and this caused a lot of inconvenience for the patients as it meant they had to make another trip down to get their medicine. In situations when we really ran out of stocks, the patients have to go off without any medicine. It is okay if we are talking about things like calcium tablets, but can you imagine the consequences of a delay in antibiotic treatment or hypertension treatment etc? Yes, patients can use the prescription to purchase the medicine from private pharmacies or pharmacies at the polyclinics and other restructured hospitals, but try telling that to an old uncle or old auntie and it does not make sense to them. Chances are they probably put aside the whole incident and forget about buying the medicine. Whichever way I look at it, this is very very poor patient service and most certainly not in-line with our hospital's mission of "holding the interest of the patient paramount" *gag*.

To solve the problem in our own way, we tried hoarding stocks in anticipation of store's stock shortage, but our sections in-charges get scolded by you because there was an increase in our sections' stock holding. When we meekly followed your order to reduce stock holding we get scolded and abused by patients because they are not able to get their full supply of medicines. Do you understand our frustrations at work when you give us such an imbecilic order? You probably do not as you are comfortably seated in some recess of the hospital, far away from the wrath of the patients, beaming at the improved bottom line and not realising that the pharmacy staff turnover rate is always faster than the stock turnover rate.

Speaking of stock turnover rate, I think you need some help understanding how the rate was derived. Basically put, stock turnover rate in units is derived by taking the number of units sold during the time period divided by the average units of inventory on hand for the time period. So what I do is keep a small quantity of item ABC on hand, and when I am sure all sections have put in their requests for ABC, I place a large order with the drug company and when the stocks come they are all snapped up by the sections. Voila! I achieved a high stock turnover rate. Anybody with a bit of grey and white matter up in this thing called a head would be able to think of this. Unfortunately, this is not a very bright thing to do when a continuous supply for the whole department needs to be ensured, but it is exactly the kind of thing to do when you want to impress the boss with quick and fantastic results. It takes a wise person to see through the trick which you are obviously not. You are just happy with the immediate results and not concerned with the bigger picture.

How can a project that only improve the work process of a small section at a much greater inconvenience to the rest of the department and patients be considered outstanding is beyond my imagination. Anyway, I hope this has enlightened you on some of the matters regarding the project and perhaps agree with me that this project is a total flop right from the beginning.

From your humble frontline staff.