Identify your process bottlenecks

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Worked at the hospital today. Did some vaccine preparation. Just like in this, vaccine preparation is a process.

In the chain of steps in the process that is vaccine preparation, from taking the vials from the refrigerator, to doing the documentation, to preparing the labels, to scanning into the hospital computer system, to preparing the syringes, preparing normal saline (the liquid used to dilute the liquid in the vial), to reconstituting the vaccine inside the vial, to withdrawing it into syringes for injection, to checking the volume and for bubbles and other foreign matters, to affixing labels and placing it into "ready-for-use" boxes for the nurses, to scanning it again into the hospital system...

With the massive number of people coming in and our limited time and workforce, any one process can become a "bottleneck" for the entire process, where either variation in the rate of completion of the step afterwards or the step before or just sheer overworking any one step step can slow the entire process down.

I was the bottleneck during some of the time, unable to complete the dispensing, checking and label affixing process before a queue for the ready-to-use vaccines starts appearing. Thank goodness I have co-workers with me, to help relieve my steps by switching over to help with my step when a queue starts appearing. I am truly grateful for their presence and help.

It's importance to look at the entire system and identify bottlenecks in our life processes, rather than just trying to optimise one step in the entire system.

Again, there's the problem of "our time is limited".

Also, I entered the clinical path.