Partogram

We used to have an obstetric indoor paper with a composite partogram in it. Unfortunately the hospital changed the indoor papers as many times as the administrators changed, sometimes more than once in the reign of the same administrator. They experimented with different designs, including a computerized first page of the paper, with just treatment sheets attached in place of the remaining pages. In these varied versions, the obstetric paper with a partogram in it was lost. Since it was such an essential thing in the management of the patients and training of the doctors, we decided to resurrect it. Municipal stationery is code numbered, there being a unique number for each type of paper. So we asked the Medical Record Officer to get us those type of indoor papers for our patients in labor. He could not find a sample. I offered to go through old archived indoor papers and find a sample. He declined, saying he would manage it. In the meantime, I downloaded from my website the partogram I had developed and gave it to the residents for use. A couple of months passed and we received a message from the central municipal press that they had the partogram ready for printing, and would one of us go there and approve the sample? Three more weeks passed before one of the two staff members assigned this job could go there. We were surprised to find that the printers had got hold of my own partogram and got ready to print ten thousand of those. Someone had signed approval on the back of the sample too, but the signature did not match that of anyone in my department. I had my doubts anyway that anyone else from my department would have gone there to approve of the partogram sample without being asked to do so. Whoever gave the printers that sample could have asked us to give a composite partogram, instead of the cervicographic progress graph I had developed. Whoever did meant well, but meaning well is not always enough. Well, that is life.