CST goes live at Lions Gate and Squamish Hospitals – Great SUCCESS!

Did this title catch your attention? Were you surprised to hear that we’ve (finally) successfully gone live with the Clinical & Systems Transformation (CST) project? If you haven’t been involved directly, you may not realize that we have NOT yet gone live but we plan to on April 28 – that’s just seven more weeks. But the headline is the dream of many of us at VCH who have been living the CST journey for the past four years.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has gotten us this far. I know you’ve given up evenings, mornings, weekends and even your usual restful sleep to make this happen. I cannot be more grateful for your dedication.

And yet, it is well known that most large system implementations fail because the change isn’t managed well. This includes a lack of engagement of staff and doctors, a lack of training and a lack of support to help users learn to use a new and quite different system. Often projects get to a certain point and a decision is made to save money on this “soft” part of the project, to their peril.

We need your help

At VCH, we recognize what is essential for a successful go live and we will not be “cheap” on training, backfill, and “at the elbow” support when we go live. But we need people – WE NEED YOUR HELP, PLEASE.

In the spirit of MyVCH, you told us that you see too many silos in VCH and that we don’t reach out and help each other as much as we should. Well, here’s the opportunity if you are a nurse or nurse educator. And if you are not but want to help, we’re sorry – unfortunately we specifically need nurses right now! Even CEOs aren’t much help it seems as I would also love to dive in directly, but have been told “no thanks!”

Lions Gate and Squamish General Hospitals need your help to provide extra hands and brains as we “go live”. Ideally, this is a four month secondment starting on April 2 and continuing through July 31. No worries if you can’t commit to the whole period (perhaps because of scheduled vacation). We can be flexible.

The perks of helping out

But why would you want to leave your comfy home unit? How about:

• Learn the new system – it will be coming to your site soon (well at least in the next 2 years :). You will be the expert and super user for your unit!
• Pay it forward – and you’ll get it back – LGH/SGH nurses will be “all in” to help your site go live when it’s your time.
• Stretch yourself – we want to be a learning organization and this will allow you to live this value.
• Your action will go a long way to giving our first site the confidence that all will be well.
• Help a fellow VCH colleague.
• You get to try something new on a temporary basis while maintaining your current role and seniority based on your collective agreement.

VCH staff get “hands on” with CST training and learning to use the new system on Workstations on Wheels (WOWs) at LGH and Squamish Hospital.

If I’ve piqued your interest and you want to know more, check out the quick links below. They’ll take you directly to specific job postings, help you connect with an HR advisor, and even read up on fellow VCH colleagues who have taken the leap and are now loving their CST roles!

Mary Ackenhusen
President and CEO, VCH