Search your own protocols, not the internet

The 2 a.m. problem

Every clinic has protocols. Binders, a shared drive, a printout taped to a cabinet. At 2 a.m. a tech does not open the binder. They guess, interrupt someone, or search the open web and get a dose that is not yours.

RAG is just a name for “search our files, then write an answer, and show which file it came from.” If it cannot cite the page, treat it as a stranger.

If you try it

• Start with the documents people actually grab: emergency doses, post-op sheets, drug CRIs.
• Put a date on every file. Stale SOP plus confident answer is worse than a missing binder.
• Test with questions the team already asks, not demo prompts.
• Some documents are DVM-only. The search tool should know that.

Building one from scratch is possible. It is also easy to ship something that sounds sure and is wrong. See the note on building tools.