SK Diary – w/c 22 April 2013

SK Diary – w/c 22 April 2013

Meeting with Simon Hamilton MLA On Wednesday morning I met with Simon Hamilton MLA, the Assembly Private Secretary to the Minister of Finance and Personnel who is set to succeed Sammy Wilson MLA in the role in 2013. This meeting came about through my involvement in healthcare social media.  Simon and I crossed tweets when I was live tweeting at NICON 2013 and he was tweeting from an accountancy conference.  We were both tweeting about …

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SK Diary – w/c 15 April 2013

SK Diary – w/c 15 April 2013

This week’s diary is a little late as I got caught up on Sunday with a technical issue while creating this Storify story. Opening of GlaxoSmithKline Office in Belfast On Wednesday afternoon I attended the opening of GSK’s office in Belfast.  They are the only international pharmaceutical company to open a permanent office in Northern Ireland and they told guests that this signals their commitment to Northern Ireland and the HSC. The Chief Medical Officer, …

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SK Diary – w/c 8 April 2013

SK Diary – w/c 8 April 2013

This is another post with two weeks rolled into one since I took a couple of days off for Easter w/c 1 April and things were generally quiet that week with so many other people being off. Quality 2020 E-Learning Platform On Friday morning (5 April) I attended a working group set up to take forward the E-learning workstream from Quality 2020.  The workstream is being led by Dr Cathy Jack, Deputy Medical Director at …

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SK Diary – w/c 25 March 2013

SK Diary – w/c 25 March 2013

I didn’t have time to write a diary for last week because I was busy writing the NI Healthcare Social Media Guide so I have combined the last two weeks in this post.  It’s been a busy and exciting couple of weeks with lots of meetings, energy and collaboration! IHM Leadership Lunch with Anne Clydesdale  On Tuesday 19th I attended the IHM (@ihmnireland) Leadership Lunch with Anne Clydesdale, Director of the Leadership Institute at Queens University …

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SK Diary – w/c 11 March 2013

SK Diary – w/c 11 March 2013

Teaching and Training on Ward Rounds Over the past number of weeks I have been experimenting with a new teaching/training technique.  I select an appropriate review patient for the F1 or F2 to review while I fulfil the support role of writing in the notes and making the obs chart, kardex and fluid balance available. Before going to see the patient I ask the F1/2 to read the previous entries in the notes and consider …

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SK Diary – w/c 25 February 2013

SK Diary – w/c 25 February 2013

This was a busy week with a lot going on so I will pick out some highlights to reflect on and discuss. Healthcare Social Media Last Friday Heather Moorhead (@HmmMoorhead) the Director of the Northern Ireland Confederation for Health and Social Services (NICON) asked if I would organise live tweeting for the NICON 2013 Conference – Transforming Your Care: Transforming Our Practice – on 6 & 7 March.  I agreed and we spoke again early this week …

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SK Diary – w/c 18 February 2013

SK Diary – w/c 18 February 2013

I’ve taken a break from writing my weekly diary for a few weeks so this one is overdue. It was a busy week but I decided to focus on two important events I attended.  The first was the ‘Women in Leadership’ event organised by the Queens Healthcare Leadership Forum. This is an important and perhaps unique student society since it was the brainchild of a medical student, whom rather than organising a Medical Leadership Society, …

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SK Diary – w/c 10 Dec

SK Diary – w/c 10 Dec

Measuring quality and efficiency of individual doctors This week a Consultant colleague and I walked to two other wards to see patients that were coded under him but were on specialty wards.  It turned out that both patients were under the care of specialty teams and this was just coding that needed updated.  Although it was important that we checked to ensure someone was looking after the patients it did take some time to do …

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SK Diary – w/c 26 November 2012

SK Diary – w/c 26 November 2012

Each weekend I will reflect back on the working week and post some observations and thoughts.  I hope you find it interesting! Chief Executive & CMO Visit On Monday the Trust Chief Executive and the Chief Medical Officer visited the acute medicine unit at the RVH.  This follows the Minister’s announcement last week that he was relaxing the special measures on Belfast Trust due to the progress made in addressing 12-hour breaches in the ED.  …

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My Week With a Healthcare Regulator

My Week With a Healthcare Regulator

Following the example set by Dr Mark Newbold, CEO of Heart of England Foundation Trust, I have decided to do a weekly blog about my work week.  I decided to do this because I found Dr Newbold’s posts of interest, as did many others.  This sparked many suggestions on Twitter that others should do the same. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while but decided to take the plunge this week (12 – …

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