sept 28 2022
Yesterday which would have been Tuesday... I had a perfect example of how to make disastrous errors. twice this month I have forgotten to take my pills after dinner.. these pills are dylantin which have controlled my seizures for 30 or 40 years.. not something i wanna forget..
1. simple matter to say to anyone like Lynn. “remind me to take the pills”. Even though Lyn is tremendously accurate and hardly ever forgets anything the reliability factor has to be somewhere in the 50%.
2. now if I ask Lynn and Donna to remind me that would reduce the reliability about 35% because Lynn would figure that probably Donna would tell her , And Donna would figure that lynn must have told her.
Now telling the camera people at mail call to remind me.. would increase my probability to about 84% but they would tell me at mail call.. which means I would have to get up and go take the pill before I forgot so the 84 percent accuracy would be shattered to about 42% because of the time lapse......... my memory being what it is.
As I talked to Lynn about it.. she simply said put out a chart and have someone initial that you've taken your pills. That gets the probability down to about 11% accurate... because I know full well if there's a chart which is supposed to have the little boxes all filled in.. that filling in the boxes takes priority over what the boxes are supposed to be filled to represent.. in other words someone will come along and see an empty square in the boxes.. and there will be that conscious thought.” if this chart has any empty spaces someone is going to make a fuss... I could prevent that fuss from happening by simply putting initials in that little square and then life will go on without the fuss” ----- I know this From years of experience.
These “somebody else musta” coupled with “I don’t want my immediate life complicted by a silly empty square.. when I can just fill it” concepts are something of which we at service dog project must be more cognizant. and in the case of my dilantin I need to reduce the error probability as near 0 as possible. Initializing a chart is out... asking me is out... seeing as unless I am staring at the clock to tell me what day it is, I will probably just answer automatically.. “thanks. Got it” as my immediate concentration is limited anyway... the ability to multitask is reduced with aging to the level of “ what did I come in here to do anyway” we all know that too....
My solution has been to put my pill holder on the window ledge for a visual check...... next to the coffee pot and not put it with the punch in clock--- because altho 100% of the people check in at the punch clock......
And this is a biggie..,.,. when someone punches in, for those few seconds it demands your attention... lining up the card etc.... but when you are making a cuppa coffee, there are a few seconds where there it perks and there is nothing to do and your eyes could wander to the pill box ... hopefully engaging your mind to noticing which slots were full and which were empty... so if I hang a day clock next to the coffee maker you could ... with the least effort sound the alarm,,,, if yesterdays pills are still There.
Plus there is it could be where I notice the pills are there.. and immediately the faucet's right there to drink water and take the pills if last night's pills are still there, I would never, never decide to take them later.. i know.
with the number of people making coffee on a daily basis, I think that is about as close to 99% as I could get.
So...... It behooves any manager of any operation to figure out what's the easiest way to get any job done while at the same time applying the concept of how critical is it to know that the job was actually accomplished. This is where bud comes in.. because he seems to be responsible for making sure all our equipment is In place and. functioning correctly.. because it is discouraging have to mop the floor,
if the mop cannot be located.
