Such was the success of the project, that over the entire pandemic, the wards never ran out of stock of essential Covid treatments by utilising this technology.<\/p>\n
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Essential elements in the change management process<\/h3>\n
An effective and well thought out change management process was crucial in gaining buy-in from internal stakeholders and in particular, the nursing team who would be day-to-day users and large beneficiaries of the new technology.<\/p>\n Valuable best practice lessons can be taken from trusts such as ours, to help support the successful adoption of technologies across the healthcare sector. First and foremost, this includes the need to have a solid change management plan in place to drive employee engagement \u2013 employees have<\/em> to<\/em> be part of the planning as much as the execution.<\/p>\n Adaptations to technology also tend to go more smoothly when applied from the \u2018bottom up\u2019. This can be done by assigning and engaging \u2018change champions\u2019 or representatives within different departments. The key overriding factor remains: be the lead on the timeline and rules of the technology, but let your employees decide how to run the show.<\/p>\n A good way to start, as we did at UHCW, was to encourage internal stakeholders to make a list of their wishes and goals from the project at the outset. This was supported by a clear communication and adaptation strategy which emphasised the value and usage of digitalising and automating pharmacy services, and the impact this would have on internal teams, as well as our patients. This helped to ensure the implementation process went smoothly and served to remind us all of the end goal when at times, the project ate into our time or we hit a bump in the road.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to work closely with your technology partners to ensure effective communication. Omnicell was key to understanding our workflow, mapping this out to ensure systems benefited the way we work, as well as providing ongoing education and training. As partners on the project, the post \u2018go live\u2019 support, which included floor walking and handholding for \u2018live day\u2019 and the week afterwards, was imperative.<\/p>\n The project is by no means complete and currently we are working towards a key milestone which will be to link the ADCs and our robotic dispensing system to Oracle-Cerner. This will mean that our patient record system will provide a live\/real-time view of what\u2019s stocked in cabinets, as well as streamlining workflow and retrieving medications. All with enhanced security and removing process waste to support closed-loop administration.<\/p>\n Further enhancing the Trust\u2019s technology adoption, we recently installed two large dispensing robots in pharmacy \u2013 Tom and Jerry \u2013 with a joint capacity to hold more than 50,000 packs of medication. Importantly, they have allowed for the automation of nearly two million medication transactions which were previously \u2018hand-picked\u2019.\u00a0 The time saved allowed a skill mix change within the department, releasing time for Medicines Management Assistants (MMAs).\u00a0 As a result, MMAs are now working directly on wards, and utilising automated cabinets to improve patients\u2019 medication journeys. Dedicated medicines returns units have helped drive the better use of medication and recycling of stock medication at a ward level. The impact has been staggering, saving large amounts in waste prevention.<\/p>\n In addition, all ward stock medication top-ups are now fully automated; the ward ADC sends a message to the robots at 6am and all ward boxes are picked and packed by the robots before the staff come into work. This process previously required manual picking and an accuracy check by another senior colleague, but is now fully automated.<\/p>\n The Pharmacy team last year celebrated winning the CEO Team Award at the Trust\u2019s Outstanding Service and Care Awards (OSCAs), which is positive recognition of its digital transformation.<\/em><\/p>\n Find out more about the new MES initiative: Omnicell.co.uk<\/a> or email: Sales-aa@Omnicell.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hardeep Bagga, Director of Pharmacy at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, discusses how best to manage the implementation of new technology following the success of digitalising pharmacy services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":5496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-secondary-care"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5499,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions\/5499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/81aa671a-9102-4cf8-94a5-2b0d3ffc19a2.jpeg\")
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