Sunny Gidda, Yvonne Huang & Jeff Salon
Sunny Gidda
Dispensary Supervisor
Surrey Memorial Hospital
Yvonne Huang
Acting Dispensary Supervisor
Surrey Memorial Hospital
Jeff Salon
Automated Medication Distribution System Administrator
Surrey Memorial Hospital
Profile submitted by:
Rochelle Gellatly & Ray Jang
Brief description of role or responsibilities
Sunny coordinates the day to day activities of the dispensary at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Yvonne was acting in Sunny’s role while he was seconded to another role. Jeff is a system administrator for the operation of automated dispensing cabinets throughout the hospital. As a team, Sunny, Yvonne, and Jeff are responsible for ensuring nursing units have the necessary tools for sending medication orders via the electronic medication order management system, access to medication reports such as Administration BC Branch Records, Automatic Stop-Dates, and Profiles, ability to retrieve medications, and access to appropriate medication contingency stock.
Description of roles to improve patient care or provide pharmacy services during the COVID-19 pandemic
Fraser Health and specifically Surrey Memorial Hospital has been especially hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Surrey Memorial Hospital had to double the capacity of the intensive care unit, converting the high acuity unit and biocontainment unit into units that could accommodate ventilated patients. Four other areas of the hospital that were not generally used as inpatient units were also required to open as inpatient wards, or be divided to serve new patient populations. This required new policies and medication supplies to be distributed. Sunny, Yvonne and Jeff all worked quickly to revise procedures, reallocate inventory and set up our computer systems to ensure medications could be received safely by patients. Jeff worked overnight to ensure our automated dispensing cabinets were loaded with the appropriate medications to allow nurses to provide patient care
Description of impact to improve patient care or provide pharmacy services during the COVID-19 pandemic
Sunny, Yvonne and Jeff were integral in converting units that could serve our growing inpatient demand. Units were created and converted quickly allowing pharmacy services to deliver seamless care to those in the greatest need. The expansion of unfunded nursing units needed to happen quickly to contain COVID-19 outbreaks, cohort COVID-19 “warm” and “hot” zones, and ensure “COVID-19 free” units were able to continue to accept new admissions. Sunny, Yvonne, and Jeff were able to pivot quickly to ensure there was no interruption in Pharmacy services to these wards. They often worked beyond their usual hours, and they offered creative solutions in these unprecedented times.