Systems Thinking and Kaizen: Tools for Hospital Pharmacy Process Improvement

A growing demand has emerged in the healthcare field for well-trained pharmacy technicians to assist the pharmacist in many practice settings by assuming greater responsibilities. These may include order entry, filing prescription orders, compounding sterile preparations, cart fill exchanges, inventory control, operation of automated technology, utilizing the computer system as well as fulfilling other patient specific duties. Well-trained pharmacy technicians in retail and institutional settings are a vital part of the healthcare team.

1. System Thinking: System thinking is nothing but instead of focusing on only one particular issue, we have to analyze and try to understand the entire system on the whole. With this kind of analyzation, we can easily find a solution to the problem as the problems are not confined to only a particular area or time. We might find a solution for a particular issue, somewhere in the whole system by analyzing the entire system completely. We should try to relate the actions and the consequences on the whole as the issues occur at different time levels, not confined to only one particular time level. We have to have knowledge of the relation between different departments of an organization and the relation between them and the functionality between the departments as to how they are related in an organization. We generally focus on only one particular issue rather than seeing the bug picture and that shouldn’t be done. In system thinking we analyze the big picture.

The National health services (NHS) provides a comprehensive healthcare services across the entire nation. It is considered to be UK’s proudest institution, and is envied by many other countries because of its free of cost health delivery to its population. Nevertheless, it is often seen as a ‘political football’ as it affects all of us in some way and hence everyone carry an opinion about it (Cass, 2006). Factors such as government policies, funding, number of service users, taxation etc all make up small parts of this large complex organisation. Therefore, any imbalances within one sector can pose a substantial risk on the overall NHS (Wheeler & Grice, 2000). This essay will discuss whether the NHS aim of reducing the nations need

Looking at various systems around the world and how they came into existence provide useful comparisons and illuminate how different countries have responded to very similar needs of their citizens as well as how to mitigate limitations and marshal opportunities offered in the diversity of these systems (Johnson & Stoskopf, 2010). This paper analyzes several health systems

A system is “A set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole” (robbins 2006), and Systems theory is the

With today’s fast moving pace there are many challenges we face that demands more non-linear system thinking instead of cause and effect linear thinking. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge stated, “system thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes,” rather than reacting to a specific part or event. System thinking involves shifting from the linear to non-linear thinking and/or the rational to the intuitive or thin-slicing type decisions. System thinking is

In accordance with John Swales, “…survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts” (27). The pharmacy proves to be a stressful work environment and there is a high turn-over rate, thus I have observed there are always new employees within the community. Although turn-over is a normal occurrence, there is a steady presence of “lifers”. A “lifer” is an employee who has been with the pharmacy for a very long time. For example, Barbie is a “lifer” and has been employed with the pharmacy for twenty-five years.

The contribution of pharmacists in a clinical setting and community pharmacy is significant that the workforce benefit from. When the workforce understands their medications and complies with the prescribed treatment plans the work center becomes healthy and the potential of increased productivity becomes a realistic and profitable proposition for the organization. When the workforce takes advantage of the healthcare services the pharmacists provide in a community and clinical pharmacies productivity and profit are at high potential reality.

The open systems model can be used to diagnose these problems, identify their causes, find the best solutions, and provide recommendations (Harrison, 2004).

Systems thinking is the capacity to see the master plan and to recognize patterns as opposed to conceptualizing change as segregated events. System thinking requires the other four orders to empower a learning organization to be figured it out. Additionally system thinking demonstrates that there is no outside that the reason for your issues at a piece of a solitary system.

Set-up and workflow of my pharmacy is pretty good for patient centered care. Patient does not have to wait too long for their prescriptions to be filled. Patients can call for their refills via telephone or online, which makes their life easy as they don’t have bother coming in-person for refills. Patient profile shows all medication history as well as number of refills remaining. This makes it easy for pharmacist to know whether to refill a prescription or call doctor for refill request. After confirming to fill a prescription pharmacist runs claim through insurance and print label after claim is successful. All medication is arranged alphabetically on shelves, thus it is easy and quick to retrieve. Then after technician fills medication and then pharmacist checks it. This workflow is quite smooth and quick to process. Final check is done by pharmacist, who confirms right medication for right patient as well as the NDC dispensed, amount dispensed, direction for use, and day supply. All these steps of process take place on working table in sequential order, which helps to reduce errors in filling and have effective prescription filling. Once the prescription is filled pharmacist do all paper

A system is a collection of elements that interact with each other over time to function as a whole. Systems thinking is a combination of the previous four practices: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning to dissect and examine the practices of the organization. I first heard learned about systems thinking five years ago when I started in the Hazelwood School District. Our district had just began our district wide professional development on systems thinking, but then we had a change in our superintendent in late August, just a few weeks after the start of school. With the change in district leadership, came a change in our district focus, and systems thinking was almost immediately abandoned. However, since revisiting it this semester, I can’t help but incorporate it into many of my daily

Systems Thinking – It is the ability to see the 10,000 foot see, and to perceive plans instead of conceptualizing change as isolated events. Systems thinking needs the other four requests to engage a learning relationship to be made sense of it. There must be a standpoint change - from being separated to interconnect to the whole, and from denouncing our issues for something external to an affirmation that how we function, our exercises, can make issues.

Systems ideas is referring to three different types of systems, each created in a different era; general systems theory, ecosystem perspectives and complex systems theory (Healy, 2005). Systems Ideas in social work originated with general systems theory

When an organization is approached as a whole, appropriate actions can be assigned to tasks thus making the system of the organization run more smoothly. Besides that, according to Senge, systems thinking gives us the realization of the importance of a feedback means in an organization.