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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Rush Job

Hate putting away totes of warehouse? Feel like it takes aaaaaaallllllllll day? I am going to let you in on my sure-fire method to efficiently put away those drugs/supplies!

***Tote of refrigerated items first*** This has nothing to do with how much or how little is in the tote, it has to do with drug stability.

***Miscellaneous small boxes of syringes, test strips, etc that come separate from the totes*** These are annoying, small, and the whole box of stuff goes in one spot on the shelf.

***Now the other totes***
1. Oversized items (bowel prep jugs, boxes of syringes, 500-1000 count bottles, pound jars of ointments, large liquid bottles, Spiriva, Advair, etc.)
2. Boxed items (anything in a box like eye drops, ointments, nasal sprays, inhalers, etc)
3. Any other liquids and recons.
4. square/rectangular/odd shaped stock bottles
5. round stock bottles

It helps to pull all the items of each step and group same drugs together then put them on the shelf before going to the next step. In a situation with two people have one person set them up while the other person puts them away and that massive mountain of drugs will be put away in not time flat!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good advice BNT! In addition to the 500-1000 count bottles, chances are pretty good that most of them will be meds that are located in the autofill machine. Gather all of those up and put them near the machine, as that will likely need to be restocked before you finish putting away the totes.

murgatr
PharmTech. RDC'06

Erin said...

haha I always sort the totes out by aisle. Makes everything so much easier. But then it makes you sad that you know exactly what goes where.

Anonymous said...

I do something similar - fridge stuff goes away first and OTC junk is thrown in a seperate tote and stuck up front for the cashiers (I tell them it's their present). Then I use 5 small trash cans which are labeled Abilify-Claravis, Clarifoam-Hydrochlor, etc...one for each aisle. The middle aisle contains our "fast mover" section as well.

Then I open a box, start grabbing drugs and tossing them into the appropriate trash can. Once it's all sorted, they go to their respective aisle and can be quickly put away.

Liquids are on their own aisle and usually get stuck on the counter right by where we sort (which is handy since it's right by the liquids).

Anonymous said...

I totally agree. I used to sort totes according to where they went. This cut down on trips. But then some "know it all" pharmacist said it was a waste of time. Shoukld have made the bastard put it up himself!

Big 'N Tasty RPH said...

To Anonymous, you are lucky that pharmacist even put any warehouse away. I can't tell you how many times I have been in a pharmacy where one or more of the pharmacists refuse to put away warehouse. My philosophy is "Get shit done!" It doesn't matter what menial repetitive job it is because at work I am on the employer time clock and the less I look at the actual clock the faster I can get my work time behind me.