ACP’s continuous quality improvement program—CQI+—is comprised of five key activities that are supported by a positive safety culture:
- Prevent,
- Respond,
- Analyze,
- Improve, and
- Communicate.
Each of these action words represent behaviours that are essential to CQI+. During the next few issues of The Link, we will focus on one of the key activities, beginning with Prevent. To achieve success here, pharmacy teams will take action to minimize risks to patients before a practice incident or close call occurs. Prevention is a central focus of CQI+. The program goes beyond simply responding when practice incidents or close calls happen—it also shifts the focus upstream, where practice incidents and close calls can be prevented from happening in the first place. Prevention activities are an important aspect of a strong safety culture. It’s a mindset that constantly explores how we can do things better and safer, all the time.
Within the key activity of Prevent, you will find several strategies to help pharmacy teams proactively address safety considerations.
The first is to revise the pharmacy’s policies and procedures to reflect their CQI process. This does not mean the pharmacy team needs to start from scratch and create new policies and procedures—it means licensees must ensure that site-specific policies and procedures are in place outlining each aspect of the pharmacy’s CQI program. Remember, everyone on the pharmacy team needs to be on the same page about the CQI processes in the pharmacy, and current and complete policies and procedures will be critical for ensuring this. To help you get started, ACP has updated its general policies and procedures template to include tips and suggestions related to continuous quality improvement.
Second, all pharmacy team members must complete CQI training. This is important to ensure consistency within the team. As part of the team’s CQI training, licensees should review the CQI+ resources on the ACP website such as the Guide to CQI+ and the CQI+ Q and A document, as well as Domain 6 of the SPPPT and the SOLP, with team members and ensure mutual understanding of the expectations of the program.
CQI meetings are another important strategy to help pharmacy teams be proactive in preventing practice incidents and close calls. They provide an opportunity for pharmacy teams to come together to openly discuss safety challenges and successes, and to work together to develop strategies to continuously improve their practices. While this may sound new to CQI+, these meetings are an evolution of the quarterly reviews that pharmacy teams are already doing, and they will help ensure a consistent approach to safety and support the safety culture in the pharmacy.
One of the most important preventative activities that a pharmacy team can do is to look at each of their systems to identify opportunities for improvement. However, this can be very challenging as it’s difficult to be objective about our own processes. That’s why ACP has introduced the concept of a safety self-assessment—a tool that pharmacy teams can use to help them examine their systems and processes based on literature and evidence about patient safety. It will provide pharmacy teams with concrete actions they can take to improve the safety for both them and their patients. Safety self-assessments must be completed every two years.
Strategies such as those mentioned above will help pharmacy teams succeed when implementing their CQI program, as perspectives of the entire team can inform a focus on preventative safety.
Remember, all requirements of the CQI+ program must be in place by February 1, 2026.
