I got a phone call from our new xo saying she had a soldier who was in exruciating pain -10 out of 10- and needed to be seen asap. Sick call is from 0715-0900. It was almost 1600. I just changed out of my scrubs and was ready to go home. Of course I agreed to see the guy. He showed up a few minutes later looking like he wasn’t in any pain at all. My assistants were scrambling to get a chair together so I could at least do some diagnosis on the guy before the clinic closed. I got him in and found he had a maxillary third molar with decay encroaching the pulp. Probably kinda painful. When I asked him how bad his pain was out of a scale of 10 with 10 being you just got your leg blown off. He replied “when you put it that way, sir, I guess its probably a 3…..kind a like a charlie horse in my mouth.”
I sent him to get a PANO but our machine was down. They’re painting in the x-ray room apparently. I managed to get an assistant to get a periapical shot of the tooth. Gave the guy his options, consented him, and had the tooth out in five minutes.
I went to go put in his prescriptions into the system. Motrin 800 (30 tabs) 1 tab tid; Roxicet 5/325 (twenty) 1-2 t q 4-6h prn extreme pain (maybe overkill in hindsight considering the ease of the procedure, but my usual rx for extractions). I submitted the Rx and double checked it to make sure it was in. I finished up with the patient and was out the door in five minutes.
The system we use to enter these scrips is called CHCS. It is a DOS based system from the early 1980s that links all the military treatment facilites to the pharmacies. This allows us to enter prescriptions under password protected access from any facility and have it just pop up in the local pharmacy. It is an antiquated system that reminds me of trying to play computer games on the PC my dad built in 1986. C:/new rx. etc.
I almost made it home when I get the phone call that the prescription had not been entered properly. I cursed my lack of old school computer knowledge and pulled the car over so I could call the pharmacy. It was 1701. They werent picking up. Irritated, I turned the car around. Drove all the way back to the clinic, re-entered the prescriptions, then walked the patient over to the pharmacy and waited with him until they filled it. When I cancelled the original order in the system to re-enter it, CHCS asked me for a cancellation comment:
“Sorry. My DOS skills aren’t what they used to be.”
Army Dentistry 