Turn "how we do it here" into a one-page protocol

Reading time: about 11 minutes

The situation. There are things your pharmacy does a particular way for good reasons — and they all live in your head. Every new person learns them by asking, badly and in pieces, over three months.

Writing procedures is unspeakably tedious, which is why they are not written. The trick here is that you are not going to write: you are going to tell it the way you would tell a person, out of order, and the AI arranges it. The one arranging does not need to know your pharmacy; the one who knows is you.

What you need to hand: Ten minutes and your phone. You can literally dictate it while tidying up: talking is far faster than writing and for this the disorder does not matter.

Step by step

Say it out loud, unordered

Open your phone’s notes, hit the microphone and explain the procedure as if telling someone starting tomorrow. Jump around, go back, say "oh, and before that…". It does not matter.

What matters is that you include the three things never found in a written procedure and always asked about: what to do when it goes wrong, who to tell, and what is never done.

Ask for the page, in the shape you want

A procedure that does not fit on one page does not get read. Say so in the prompt, and mean it.

Act as someone who writes clear working procedures for a small
pharmacy team.

Here is, dictated and out of order, how we do <<goods-in from the
wholesaler>> in my pharmacy. Turn it into a ONE-page procedure with
this exact structure:

1. WHAT THIS IS FOR (two lines, plain language)
2. WHEN IT HAPPENS (and who does it)
3. STEPS, numbered, imperative, one line each
4. IF THIS HAPPENS, DO THIS INSTEAD (the odd cases I told you about)
5. WHAT IS NEVER DONE
6. WHO GETS TOLD, AND WHEN

Rules:
- Use only what I told you. If something seems missing, do NOT fill it
  in: list it at the end under "you did not tell me this and I think it
  is needed".
- No jargon. If I use an odd word specific to my pharmacy, keep it.
- Short sentences. This is read standing up and in a hurry.

---
paste your dictation here

Read the list at the end — that is the gold

The "you did not tell me this" section is the most valuable part of the whole case, which is why it is explicitly requested. Those are the holes in your procedure: the things you solve by instinct and nobody else can solve because they are written nowhere.

Do not answer them in the chat. Answer them in the page. That is where a procedure stops being a transcript and starts being useful.
Ask it to ask you what you left out

Telling a procedure out loud skips exactly the things you take as obvious — and the obvious ones are what somebody starting tomorrow does not know.

After it gives you the first version, write:

"Before the final version: ask me the 5 questions you would need for this to work in a pharmacy you do not know. Especially about what to do when something goes wrong. Do not answer them yourself."

The questions it returns are half the value of this case. They are nearly always from the same family: what happens if that person is not in, if the product is out of stock, if the system is down, and who gets told. That is precisely what nobody writes down and what everybody asks on day two.

The "do not answer them yourself" is compulsory: leave it out and it invents the answers, and the protocol ends up with instructions that are not your pharmacy’s — which is worse than not having one.
Hand it to whoever knows it least

Not your long-standing second-in-command: the newest person, or somebody who does not work there. Have them read it and tell you which step they hesitated at. Not "does it make sense" — everyone says yes — but where they hesitated.

That test takes one go and fixes 80% of procedures. And you can do it today.
Put a date and an owner on it

Two lines at the bottom: when it was written and who decides whether it changes. Without that, in a year nobody knows if it still applies and habit takes over again — which is exactly where you came from.

And keep it somewhere readable standing up: a folder in the back room beats the cloud if the cloud is on a computer you have to switch on.

A full example, and what is wrong with it

A two-minute dictation about how special orders are taken, told out of order and with jumps, exactly as it came off the microphone. Below, what it returned.

What it replies

PROTOCOL — Customer special orders

1. Check availability in the system before accepting the order.
2. Record in the order book: product, quantity, name and phone.
3. Tell the customer the approximate timeframe (24-48 h if it makes the day’s order).
4. On arrival, check against the book and mark as received.
5. Notify the customer by phone or message.
6. If not collected within 7 days, notify again.
7. If not collected within 15 days, return to supplier or add to stock.

Critical points: do not accept orders for products with no supply guarantee. Take payment up front for high-value or non-returnable orders.

And now, what is wrong with that reply:

The timeframes are invented: you never said 7 or 15 days. Nor 24-48 hours. They are reasonable timeframes — hence the danger — drawn from how any pharmacy works, not yours. If yours notifies after three days and returns after a month, this protocol has just written a rule nobody decided, and somebody new will follow it to the letter.
The up-front payment was not yours either. And it is worse than a timeframe, because it is a commercial decision: it changes what you say to a customer at the counter. It appears under "critical points" with exactly the same air of authority as what you actually said, and that is the problem — from the document you cannot tell yours from its.
It ordered things well, which is what you did ask for. Your dictation jumped from notifying to recording and back. The document comes out in sequence, without repetition and with complete steps. That is the work you delegated and it did it well: what cannot be delegated is deciding what goes in.
And everything you skipped as obvious is missing. What to do if the customer does not answer. If the product arrives damaged. If half of it arrives. If whoever ordered it sends somebody else. None of that is there, because you did not dictate it — and it is exactly what somebody asks in their second week.

The pattern here: the structure is its job and the content has to be yours, and the document does not distinguish between them. Which is why the next step is reading it hunting for figures and rules you do not remember saying — there are usually two or three and they always sound right.

And why the questions step works so well: asking it to ask you what is missing produces exactly the list of four cases above, and then you supply the answers.

And if your pharmacy is not like that

If somebody else knows the procedure, not you. Have that person dictate it, rather than telling you so you can dictate it. On the way you lose exactly the details only the person doing it knows, and those are what make the document useful. A protocol dictated by whoever performs it is also accepted far better than one that arrives finished.

If it is a procedure you already have written and outdated. Paste it and say "this is what is written down; what I am dictating now is what we actually do — show me the differences". That difference list is the most useful document this case produces, because it is the one that says what changed without the paper being updated.

If the protocol has to stand up to an inspection. Then this is the draft, not the document. What an inspection asks for — which regulation, who is responsible, what record remains, how often it is reviewed — the model does not know and must not invent. Use it to get the content organised and add the formal wrapper yourself, or route it through whoever handles your quality system.

If there are many procedures and starting feels overwhelming. Start with the one you have been asked about most this month. Not the most important: the most asked. That is the one genuinely costing you time, and having it written pays the effort back the same week — which is what makes you write the second one.

When it does not work first time

The dictation comes out full of errors and makes no sense.

It does not matter: paste it, errors and all. The model reconstructs the sense without trouble and fixing them by hand is the very work you were trying to avoid. The only things worth checking before pasting are proper nouns and figures, where an error does change the meaning.

It comes back in over-corporate language.

Say "write it as you would explain it to somebody on their first day, short sentences, second person". A protocol nobody reads is useless, and formal register is the number one reason they do not get read.

I cannot get it to ask questions, it always answers them itself.

Put it as the first line of the message and in capitals: "DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTION. Only ask them." At the end of the prompt it gets forgotten, because by then it is already in document-producing mode. And if it still answers, cut the conversation and start a fresh one with only the questions.

I wrote it and nobody reads it.

Nearly always for two reasons, and neither is the content: it lives in a folder on the computer instead of where the task happens, and it runs to more than one page. Print it, pin it where the work is done, and if it does not fit on one page split it into two procedures — which is probably what it was.

Before you use what it gave you

It fits on one page. If it does not, something is surplus or it is two procedures.
The "what is never done" section is not empty.
You answered the gaps it flagged, in the page itself.
Somebody who did not know it has read it and told you where they hesitated.
You made it ask you what you had left out, and you answered.
It fits on one page.
It says what to do when something goes wrong, not only when it all works.

It fills gaps with what is "usually done". Without the instruction not to invent, you get a textbook procedure that resembles yours but is not — the worst possible outcome, because it looks like you already have it written.

It softens the prohibitions. Where you say "this is never done", it can come back as "it is advisable to avoid". In a procedure that is not a stylistic nuance: it is a different instruction. Check that section word by word.

It turns it into a twenty-page quality manual. Without a cap it gives you objectives, scope, regulatory references and a version control table. Nobody reads that on day one. One page — and if it does not fit on one page, it is two different procedures.

It turns an exception into the rule. If while dictating you say "one time it happened that…", there is a fair chance that case ends up as a fixed step. On review, look at each step and ask whether it happens every time or happened once. A protocol with exceptions baked in is one nobody finishes reading.

Now, with your own. Start with the procedure you have explained most times this year. That one is, by definition, the one that is not written down. Dictate for ten minutes today and you will have the page this afternoon.

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Turn "how we do it here" into a one-page protocol

Step by step

Say it out loud, unordered

Ask for the page, in the shape you want

Read the list at the end — that is the gold

Ask it to ask you what you left out

Hand it to whoever knows it least

Put a date and an owner on it

A full example, and what is wrong with it

And if your pharmacy is not like that

When it does not work first time

Before you use what it gave you