Administration

July 17, 2009

We had our first meeting with Michele Babich today as part of our adminstration rotation. We will meet once a month for two hours. As part of this rotation, we will be organizing Pharmacy Awareness Week (PAW) in March. We have already started planning it. We looked at all the materials that were left over from last year and developed a plan on we needed to do over the next month.

August 13, 2009

Today we discussed the differences between a leader and manager. Michele had asked us to discuss someone in the pharmacy department who we think exhibits either leadership and/or management qualities.  The person I picked  is a manager but also exhibits many qualties of a leader. This person is very focused on change in the department, facilitates decision making rather than makes decisions and has a passion for pharmacy.

October 9, 2009

During our third meeting with Michele, we were introduced to a current issue in the pharmacy department. The “case” we were introduced to deals the fact that VIHA provides outpatient chemotherapy services in various locations on the island. BCCA fully re-imburses VIHA for the costs of the chemotherapy but not for other costs (materials, staffing costs). Over the next few months, we will look at strategies to have these outpatient services properly re-imbursed.

November 4, 2009

Today we discussed the importance of communicating errors to patients. Important things to consider are: 1) Giving an honest straightforward and objective account of the situation, 2) Expressing sympathy/empathy and an apology if appropriate, 3) Assuring that things will be changed to prevent the same occurence from happening to another patient.

We also discussed the BCCA case study and for next time we will come up with “approaches” to get more funding.

January 6, 2010

Today we discussed possible solutions to the BCCA case study with Michele.  We had read chapters 7 and 8 from Achieving  Safe and Reliable Healthcare and how it applies to our current work environment. Michele asked us what safety issues impact our current work environment. Things like the importance of seamless care (admission and discharge med rec) and having illegible bradmas were two things that were brought up.  Lastly, discussed human resource issues and the importance of performance planning and annual performance reviews.

February 3, 2010

We reviewed chapters 9 and 10 in Achieving Safe and Reliable Healthcare. Chapter 9 discussed different types of adverse event reporting systems; confidential, anonymous and open. Confidential and open reporting systems are the ideal systems because they allow for follow up and investigation into the incident. With anonymous reporting systems, this is not possible. Another important factor in adverse event reporting systems is to ensure that follow up is done. Otherwise, staff may think reporting an incident is pointless because no investigation completed as a result. We also talked about patient safety leadership walkrounds which was the topic of chapter 10. These are important not only because it allows front line staff to relay to the executive what important safety issues are emerging, but also because it shows that the leadership in the hospital is commited to patient safety.  The last part of session we discussed human resources issues such as labour relations.

Documentation of how the competencies were demonstrated over the course of planning for Pharmacy Awareness Week.

1) Personal Effectiveness

– Presents both verbal and written information clearly: As a way to recruit staff to help out with PAW, I attended a staff meeting at RJH to encourage people to sign up to help with the booth. We only had 5 minutes to talk so I basically very quickly talked about the theme and where it was held and how it was a great opportunity to promote the profession. To promote PAW to VIHA staff, we made an advertisement that was available to all staff via the Pharmacy Intranet and also the main Intranet webpage. We kept the advertisement very simple but it had all the information for the talks and emphasis on the theme this year.

– Focuses on the situation, issue or behavior when communicating with others

– Listens to others and responds in an appropriate manner

– Requests and provides feedback in a timely manner: We sent a summary of all the information we wanted in a press release to Valerie Wilson of VIHA Communications. She prepared a draft press release and sent it to us for editing/feedback.  We read through the press release as a group and suggested a few minor changes and sent it back to her within a few days.

2) Leader Effectiveness

– Keeps promises and honours commitments in a timely manner:

– Stays calm and focused under pressure: The week leading up to PAW was stressful, mainly because I was in ICU and the three of us were so busy it was really hard to find a day to meet. We had to put together the poster display and it took a while to laminate all the pictures. We only had a couple of hours to do it all but we stayed focused and managed to make a pretty professional looking display.

– Demonstrates an appreciative approach with others: To thank staff for volunteering during PAW, we will be handing out USB drives to everyone who helped us. We will also be giving out thank you cards and a gift to all our lunch time speakers as well as our “liason” contact. We want to show our appreciation for all their help and hope that in the future they will volunteer again for PAW.

3) People Development, Team and Collaboration

– Builds productive working relationships with others: Greg McKelvie has agreed to be our “mentor” for PAW. We had a meeting with him about PAW and discussed the location of our booth (still to be determined due to construction at VGH), location of lunch time talks, lunch time talk topics and ideas on how to promote PAW (intranet page, media, etc).  I look forward to working with Greg over the next few months as he is enthusiastic about pharmacy and about promoting the pharmacy department (September2009).

– Promotes team spirit by respecting differences in people, valuing diversity of opinion and working with other to achieve goals. Last year, PAW focused on clinical pharmacy but there was no mention of pharmacy technicians. We are also working to get a technician from RJH or VGH to talk about the current and future role of pharmacy technicians during one of the lunch time talks. I thought this would be a good way educate staff about what pharmacy technicians do and how valuable they are to the health care system

–Actively encourages open dialogue and cooperation: Since August, Hilary, Evelyn and I have been having bi-weekly meetings to plan PAW and we have been communicating via email when we accomplish certain tasks. We have been keeping a “table” of tasks we have completed. The table also includes tasks we have yet to complete and deadlines.

– Creates a strong network of internal and external contacts: Since August, we have been contacting numerous personnel both inside the pharmacy department as well as outside the department. Within the department, we have contacted different managers such as Dr. Richard Bachand and Winnie Lam for their help in preparing our press release as well as the pharmacy staff at both RJH and VGH to enlist help with our booth during PAW. Outside the department we have contacted: Dub Buxcey from HR for help with our poster display, Valerie Wilson for the preparation of our press release, Zoey Gray for advertising PAW on the VIHA intranet page, Christina Berlanda, professional  practice consultant, to help advertise PAW to VIHA nursing staff and numerous other contacts!

– Treats others with understanding, empathy and respect:

– Takes ownership for actions and decisions:

4) Quality Care and Service

– Applies quality improvement tools and methods

– Monitors quality of results on an on-going basis:

5) Job Knowledge and skills

– Demonstrates consistent reliability, accuracy, quantity and quality of work

– Assesses alternative courses of action, utilizes input as appropriate and reaches conclusions based on available data

– Established clearly defined courses of action and organizes work to accomplish goals: We set up a table in August outlining when we wanted certain tasks done. Every time we have a meeting we update the table and decide which tasks need to be accomplished next. This ensures we don’t leave anything until the last minute and/or forget things!

– Uses relationships effectively to get tasks accomplished: Over the next month, we will each be attending various pharmacy staff meetings to promote PAW. I attended a pharmacists’ meeting at RJH to promote PAW and  to enlist the help of some volunteers who might want to travel to VGH to help out with our booth.  I knew most of the pharmacists at the meeting, having worked with them last year, and I used this to my advantage!

6) Innovation

– Promotes creativity and innovation to solve problems: Since we have a limited PAW budget this year, we have had to cut our budget. One of the innovative things we did was for the lunch time talks. Instead of purchasing muffins and coffee, we will be purchasing coffee only and asking VGH pharmacy staff to make baked goods instead.

– Find creative ways to provide appropriate service

7) Problem Solving and Decision Making

– Uses policies and standards as guidelines for problem solving and decision making

– Clearly articulates decision making process

– Collaborates with others to identify issues, solve problems and make decisions

– Involves key stakeholders in decision making: After the construction at VGH was completed, we had to decide on a location to have our booth during PAW. We decided that the North end on the main floor outside the lab would be an ideal location as there is ample space and many people walk by it to get to the elevators. However, we weren’t sure if we needed “permission” from someone with authority to do this. So we discussed the location with Jim Baxter, the capital planner at VIHA, and received prior approval to set up there.