CQI meetings

To support the safety culture in the pharmacy, the licensee must provide regular opportunities for discussion and reflection on safety. These meetings must occur, at a minimum, every three months and should involve as many pharmacy team members who support patient care as possible. Every attendee should be encouraged to voice their perspectives, opinions, and ideas, and they should be supported when they do.

Quality improvement meetings should include

• If recently completed, a review of the pharmacy’s latest safety self-assessment and an evaluation of any associated action plans. It may be valuable to revisit this from time to time, especially when meetings include new pharmacy team members.
• A discussion about any practice incidents and close calls that have occurred since the previous meeting, including any contributing factors or root causes identified, and steps taken to address them.
• An evaluation of action plans developed as a result of analyzing practice incidents and close calls, making adjustments as needed.
• An assessment of the pharmacy team’s engagement with the pharmacy’s CQI processes (e.g., the team’s involvement in documenting and analyzing practice incidents and close calls). This is not to blame anyone; rather, this will help to identify any barriers to participating, and provide an opportunity to brainstorm solutions to increase engagement by the entire pharmacy team.
• A review of relevant information from external sources (e.g., ISMP Canada publications, information from ACP, learnings shared by other pharmacies) that could proactively inform safety strategies in the pharmacy.
• Importantly, a discussion about safety successes! The continuous quality improvement meeting is also an opportunity to celebrate when the team’s actions have had a positive impact on patient safety, the quality of care the pharmacy team provides, or pharmacy team member satisfaction.

Document the results of the meeting, preferably within the pharmacy’s practice incident management platform if possible. Documentation should reflect

• the date of the meeting,
• who was in attendance,
• what was discussed during the meeting, and
• any action plans developed as a result of the meeting.

Safety huddles

Safety huddles are short, informal CQI meetings that allow sharing of timely information about quality or safety concerns, or to celebrate successes. An opportune time to conduct a safety huddle is following the discovery a practice incident or close call; however, pharmacy teams should also consider conducting them more routinely. For example, many healthcare teams conduct a safety huddle at the beginning of each day or at “shift change.”