None of us is as smart as all of us." --Ken Blanchard
The difference between success and failure is a great Team.
It is not easy working in Intensive Care in Malawi. It does not have to be impossible either. We are making progress with the few resources that we have. Our abilities have given us the hunger and desire to do more. This is the fuel to our motivation. Through our daily interactions we have identified the areas we need to work on to help improve the quality of care for our patients and or work environment. We have a common goal! And the goal now is to improve! Improve to me means that we have somethings right already, therefore we are not taking the first steps, rather learning how run.
The First of its kind ever retreat by the Intensive Care Staff was organized with Funding from the OSLO-Malawi Norwegian project and Life support Foundation. The aims of this retreat were to give a chance and time for the staff to meet in a joint group and discuss areas needing improvement in the Intensive Care. The treat was filled with mostly discussion sessions and feedback, ice breakers to help the staff interact more and of course game drives and swimming. Its amazing how in a group of 24 people, we all managed to find something personal in common. Cheers Mtisunge for that. It was fun!
This is one opportunity for the staff to have an off work conversations with one another as well and help build a stronger team.
At the end of it all, concrete plans have been made and specific people have been assigned different tasks they will need to carry out to make the plans effective. As usual The ICU small working group will oversee the implementation of these plans. We have reached several mile stones at this retreat as well. QECH ICU now has Med-Tech Group. This group will be responsible for all the equipment in ICU. This is a capacity building step to help staff understand all the equipment used in ICU better. Several groups have been formulated to focus on other different areas of improvement e.g Patient Monitoring, Drugs and disposables ETC.
The general impression from this retreat that we all have similar thoughts of what is current situation in our unit. Which means then it should be a possible project to harness that into a common goal we all aim for. Change is possible, It can be done. Oh! Scratch that, IT WILL BE DONE.
"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." --Henry Ford
