Patient Safety Quality Specialist Taralynn Richmond started working in the field of quality/patient safety/ patient relations 15 years ago at a time when this field was rapidly evolving and becoming more formalized. Her passion for Improvement Science resulted in her completing a Masters of Science in Healthcare Quality. She quickly learned how healthcare is built on many complex systems and processes that sometimes need to be reviewed to be safer, provide a better experience for patients, families and staff.
Operating with quality in mind means embracing and refining safe, effective practices and interactions every day and in every way across the organization. “When patients come to hospital they should expect and deserve to receive healthcare that is timely, safe, and effective, that provides a positive experience for themselves and their loved ones,” says Taralynn. “In this work, I think it’s important to always reflect on what would I want as a patient or a caregiver.
“Key to the quality mindset is being able to connect the dots between what we do and why we do it. It’s about knowing that our actions matter. I love the opportunity to work with multiple stakeholders in a process including nurses, physicians, leaders, patients, learners and non-clinical staff to improve processes to ultimately improve the experience for patients and staff. Together, we are building a culture of quality at KHSC, an environment where everyone genuinely cares about improving the experience of patients, families and staff.”
When KHSC shows what it knows to Accreditation Canada in April 2022, it will mark Taralynn’s sixth accreditation site survey, a process geared to measuring an organization’s performance against strict practice standards. “I have been involved with leading Accreditation at three other hospitals and participated in two site surveys as a student in long-term care,” says Taralynn. “Accreditation is about the work we do every day. Accreditation standards support KHSC’s ability to continually improve and meet national best practice standards. As an organization we always want to strive to sustain and improve the quality of care that we provide. A site-survey should be considered a positive experience. It’s our opportunity to welcome external partners into our organization and showcase the fantastic work that we at all levels in the organization do every day.”
“We have seen our strengths through the pandemic such as staff resilience, working together rapidly to adopt to the changing landscape to ensure our staff and patients were safe and ensuring that the perspective of patients and families was considered throughout organizational changes. These are accomplishments that we should be proud of and highlight for our surveyors when it is our turn to shine in 2022.”
When not working, Taralynn enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters.
Gallery
