How does your practice store its stock?
Abstract
Efficient storage of stock can save time and money, as items are easier to find and less likely to be damaged or go out of date, leading to a more harmonious and less stressful environment for all team members. So how well does your practice measure up?
Endoscopes hanging on the backs of doors, stethoscopes hung over cup-board door handles, boxes of rarely-used antibiotics gathering dust and then going out of date at the far end of the store cupboard shelves: does this sound familiar? Maybe the practice has an efficient storage and stock control system in place now, but those working there can remember the old days when operations were delayed due to the hunt for an important piece of kit stored in the wrong place. Proper stock control and storage may save time and money, allow pets to go home earlier following time-efficient operations, and can lead to greatly reduced stress for practice staff as they go about their daily tasks. Knowing where everything is kept, and that it is stored correctly, can also improve practice harmony since everyone is working to the same set of instructions.
Although guidelines and regulations are in place for the correct storage of drugs, oxygen cylinders and laboratory samples, as well as for the safe disposal of hazardous waste (including sharps) (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, 2013), very little information is readily available in one place about the best way to store other veterinary consumables, or indeed vital (and often expensive) surgical and diagnostic equipment. For instance, the instructions supplied with costly items such as laproscopes, or even stethoscopes, will include details on how they should be stored when not in use, but how many practices keep such instruction leaflets to hand, or even describe the storage instructions in a practice handbook? Likewise no one has, as yet, produced a definitive study on how much time and energy might be wasted in the average veterinary practice by staff trailing backwards and forwards between storage cupboards and consulting rooms looking for a particular box of antibiotics, which are definitely in stock according to the computer records, but are not in the correct place on their designated shelf. Some practices are better organised than others, when it comes to storage, but it is unlikely that any are perfect and so a standard needs to be developed that all can strive towards.
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