Reducing queues in a Nigerian hospital pharmacy

Abstract

Queues are characterized structures formed to maintain order and create a hold on time, money and human contribution towards development and efficient performance of any system. The aim of this work was to characterize the queue, describe the queue discipline of the outpatient pharmacy, to institute a cross-sectional intervention by streamlining queue behaviour and to measure the impact of streamlining queue characteristics and queue discipline on waiting time of patients. Results showed that queue characteristics existing at the pharmacy during the situation analysis was a single server-multiple queue model. However, after the intervention was done involving staff re-orientation, the streamlined process reduced waiting time from 167.0 to 55.1 min. Queue discipline was strictly instituted by designed tally cards that were serially numbered. The characterization and discipline that was instituted handled and/or eliminated the challenge of shunting, balking or jockeying and reduced reneging. The workflow chart was sketched and drawn to scale, aiding the collation of baseline data and for proposed structural modifications. Other results obtained include the waiting area to pharmacy space ratio, which gave a good result of 1:9. Effort should therefore be intensified by hospital pharmacists to reduce patient queues and improve efficiency of services, following the results of snapshots from this work.   Key words: Queue characteristics, queue discipline, outpatient pharmacy.