The lights go. The workstation dies mid-note. A patient is on the couch, another is halfway through registration, and the pharmacy cannot see what was prescribed.

This is a routine event, and it should have a routine response. In most practices it does not, so the response is improvised each time and varies with whoever happens to be senior that day.

Write the downtime procedure

One page, printed, laminated, kept somewhere reachable in the dark. It should answer, in order:

  • Who confirms the outage and decides it is not momentary
  • Who tells the waiting room, and what they say
  • Which paper forms are used, and where they are kept
  • How patients already registered are identified without the system
  • How prescriptions are handled and how the pharmacy verifies them
  • Which appointments continue and which are rescheduled
  • Who is called about the power or the network
  • Who enters the paper records afterwards, and by when

The last item is the one most often omitted, and it is why practices end up with a gap in the record months later.

Keep the downtime pack ready

A physical box: blank encounter forms, prescription pads, receipt book, a printed list of the day's appointments, a printed list of key phone numbers, torches, and pens. Printed at the start of each day, because a list stored on a computer is unavailable precisely when it is needed.

Printing the day's schedule each morning takes a minute and is the single most useful item in the box.

Separate the failures

Power, network and system outages are different events with different responses, and staff conflate them. A network outage with power intact may still allow local work. A power outage takes everything. A system fault takes the software but leaves you able to phone the vendor.

Make the procedure say which is which, and how to tell.

Protect the equipment

An uninterruptible power supply on the server and main workstation is not a luxury. Its job is not to keep you working; it is to allow a controlled shutdown, because abrupt loss of power during a write is what corrupts a database.

Put the router on backup power too. Losing it takes the network down even when the computers survive.

Rehearse it once

Choose a quiet afternoon and run the procedure deliberately. You will find out which forms are missing, which staff have never seen the box, and which step nobody understands. That hour is worth more than the document itself.

Tell patients plainly

Patients in Nigeria understand power failure. What they do not tolerate is being left in a corridor with no information. A staff member who explains what has happened, what it means for their appointment, and what the options are, preserves the relationship entirely.