In November a training was organised at Statia for staff from Queen Beatrix Medical Centre and St Eustatius Auxiliary Home. The topic was Person Centered HealthCare. Underlying principle in the course was that “happy staff make happy patients”. Theories, experiences, practices were exchanged about how we can stay happy in our work. All suggestions were summarised in the SWOP (c) principle. SWOP stands for attention to the Self, the Work, the Others and the Positive as guiding principles for happiness in your work. SWOP is also about making the change, “swop” from a negative to a positive attitude. Participants rated the course 4.2 on a five point scale. The participants especially valued that they got the chance to express themselves and their concerns. Improvement could be made by changing the time of the course from 8-4 rather than 9-5.
#3 ACT Guidelines for auditors
ACT GUIDELINES FOR AUDITORS FOR LONG TERM CARE
Standards of the Joint Commission International (JCI) are popular, also in Long Term Care organisations, also in the Caribbean. Often these standards are used for internal auditing. The JCI standards from the original first edition for long term care organisations appear to be quite complicated and too formal for daily use. White and Yellow Cross at Sint Maarten asked me to develop a simple, but effective guideline for internal auditors, easy to use in the Caribbean context, based on JCI standards. I’d like to thank everyone who worked with me on this project, especially the internal auditors from White and Yellow Cross that provided me valuable insights that made it possible for me to develop to this document.
A sample of the document can be found here. Reactions are welcome.
#2 Feelings about Sint Maarten
Sint Maarten has been heavily damaged by the hurricane Irma last month. I feel strongly connected to the people that I have been working with the last few years. I wish everybody the strenght and wisdom to cope with this disaster. I have the trust that the people of Sint Maarten can keep their hopes up to improve what needs to be improved.
At the end of this month I am scheduled for a training at Sint Eustatius. On transit I hope to visit Sint Maarten.
#1
Without a preset plan on the way to a new horizon
Healthcare Organisations are continuously developing. They developed their focus from control, through continuous improvement towards commitment in a quality culture. However, I’d like to pose here, breakthrough change in healthcare as well as education institutes is still needed.
More and more this change will be unplanned, emergent. McKinsey and Company did research under 2200 managers in healthcare. Seventy % of these indicate that their strategic planning failed. And the same goes for other sectors.
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner state that there is more and more proof that Western sequential planning processes are less effective in rapidly changing contexts. Does the Plan-Do-Check-Act-cycle work well enough in cases like that? And what else do we need?