This month we’ve visited June, who is one of our partners. June works at the Social Psychiatry Centre in Roskilde, where she oversees the distribution of medicine for over 25 people. We have asked her about her day-to-day workings, her thoughts on busy days, the importance of quiet and silence when distributing medicine, and how our products help her everyday life.
What does your typical day look like?
A Monday morning starts with an overview of the week, what do we have of doses in this week and what do we have of challenges and things to take care of. Then there are a lot of cases that suddenly occur during the week, so there are many new things that need to be dealt with.
How long does it take for you to dose a set for a week?
Well, it changes. It depends on the amount of people you have to dose the medicine for, and how big the doses are. Some patients require one tablet a day, and then we have others who receives 20 in the morning, 5 at dinner, 15 in the evening, and 4 at night. There really is a huge difference when dosing for someone who needs four or forty pills.
What else do you spend you day on?
As you dose the medicine, you will figure out if there is enough for the next four weeks of doses ,and if there is not, then you need to write a list and then order it at their own doctor, the district psychiatrist, or the psychiatric hospital.
What is important to you when dosing medicine?
Peace and quiet to concentrate, no disturbances, no talk and no people in and out of the room.
Proper conditions, that is, table space so the medicine can be organized. I organize the medicine myself in a definite and standardized manner. I cannot have anything on one side there and something to the other side there. It’s a totally standardized way to set it up. Space and good light. The order and clarity of where the medicine is so you can find it, and then of course good quality equipment. Something that works, because when you work with something as important as medicine, it is important that the equipment meets the requirements and is durable. I have some patients who started living here in April 2013, who still use the same boxes as when they had their first dose. They are used every day and are treated hard, and the lids are still holding hanging in there.
Do your problems during the dosing arise due to disturbances?
Based on my own experience, that’s also what the staff say. That’s where the mistakes happen, well that is what my nurse said, it’s when you get interrupted. You are in a good flow, and that is why it’s important, I think, to follow a very standardized route.
How can Kibodan products make your routines better or worse when you are following your routines?
Well, they only make all of it easier. Because they really do …
I think it’s so impressive that you can develop a product that’s so spot on. I think that’s so amazing. Appropriate for the purpose, easy to work with, clear with blue spaces for the care sector. I simply think that they are so brilliant, I really do.
And the blue dividers? They make it easier for you to sit and observe because the pills are white?
We have an incredible amount of white tablets, and not that many in colours. It’s great when they have colours. So, one like this one (takes a pink pill) It’s so nice to dose. You are in no doubt at all, and they are brown here, they are so nice.
Our products are transparent with a blue shade, would a different colour make it easier for you?
No, I think it’s relaxing. It’s relaxing and you have the contrast, and you can see it when you get tablets in it. Nice, noble and serious because when you’re in the care sector – I know that Kibodan produces red and neat pill dispensers and it’s cool when you’re young for when you have something at home, but for our use, it’s good that they are so noble, and so serious, and when you sit and look at it all day, that’s great.
I have taken a statement from our health minister who was out saying that you cannot make parallels from mistakes in nursing homes to a lack of time. But that’s more about bad management and the organization of work. Do you agree that it is not only time that is a problem with errors, but also how one’s management is at various nursing homes and centres?
You can go back and say that it’s not just time, peace and quiet, proper relationships and routines, and it‘s also all those who work in the homecare. They may have cleaned a microscopic space, where they are sitting with the box there and little pills. These are really bad conditions you have in some places, but you cannot organize the homecare. There are many homes where they don’t have 10 square meters of space, and you have to try to clean a little. So, you have got to just work with what you have.