Recent orders
Setting a pollution prevention goal for the company
Case study
Pollution prevention
April 3, 2011
Abstract
Pollution prevention is a concern to many companies and everybody right now, especially after a massive global warming alarm in the 20th century, many facilities and institutions are trying to implement on issues which will bring an end or halter on matters concerning pollution.
This has enabled many plants, facilities, companies and institution to try and implement the new changes in their organizations programs to enable minimization of pollution, minimization of waste production and the introduction of purchasing of recyclable materials.
Setting a pollution prevention goal for the company
Below is a list of my proposed goals which will help in tackling, halting and implementing new issues concerning pollution in the plant.
Positive procurement practices to ensure the purchase of recycled content materials as directed by environment protection agency.
Increase the volume of recycled materials.
Decrease the purchase of unnecessary toxic and hazardous chemicals.
Decrease the generation of solid wastes.
Decrease the consumption and free of pollutants as directed by the agency pollution prevention strategists.
Reduce the release and exploitation of the toxic chemicals to environmental justice areas where socioeconomic factors are of concern.
Decrease the implementation of extremely hazardous chemicals in the facility.
Reduction in the consumption of materials, water and power in the facility.
Establish a pollution prevention team
Select the pollution prevention team of which they should be selected from the current facility staff and try to Convince and gain support from the staff; the project of pollution prevention should be supported by maintenance engineers, supply staff, safety staff and occupational health professionals but also the help of some staff to help in the field work may be required. This will help in smoothing of work when it comes to implementing the new pollution prevention policies in the facility. The prevention team should be managed by a leader from the environmental prevention agency.
Gather and ask for ideas from the staff team, make them donate ideas on how they think the matter of pollution in the plant should be tackled. Provide some prevention skills to some staff making them to understand and have the idea on how to tackle and prevent pollution in the facility; this will be by offering some lessons concerning pollution management and prevention to the staffs.
Creating a management commitment
Try to create a bonding bridge between the upper management and the staff; this will help in the prevention plan to run more smoothly to facilitate the growth and prevention of pollution within the plant facility. Determine and know the responsibilities of who are supposed to purchase and handle raw materials in the plant.
Conduct a pollution prevention opportunity assessment
The staff team should come up with ideas on how to prevent pollution; they are also supposed to identify activities that will promote pollution prevention. Identify or come up with some potential prevention activities and opportunities that will help promote the pollution prevention. Implementation of immediate changes in the facility to help in pollution prevention, provide applications of current pollution prevention policies, techniques or technologies.
The staff will have to conduct analytical measurements on studies; it will have for them to assess pollution prevention opportunities before the completion of the analysis, during this act additional analysis will be required. Thorough pollution preventive assessments opportunities should be conducted by the facility staff, also the baseline may show the processes acquiescent to pollution prevention options. When the activities concerning the preventing pollution plan are completed or new ones are identified through pollution prevention opportunity assessments, the list of prevention activities will change, here is when the listing of all the pollution preventive activities and opportunities are identified.
Set plan on how to manage different issues in the plant such as cost reduction in the purchasing of non recyclable materials, minimizing the usage of toxic and hazardous chemicals or reduction of water usage in the plant. Exertion and implementation of issues concerning pollution prevention, this will help in impacting the process responsible for environmental issues.
Develop criteria and rank facility on wide pollution prevention activities.
The project should depend on the facility specific consideration and goals on which this is the order in which you choose to initiate pollution prevention activities. It will also initiate on improving the facility overall compliances status. Determine the environmental benefits, the time taken for the implementation of changes in the facility and the save on cost associated with project implementation changes. Figure out the impact on the project in the plant mission and the ability of the facility staff to accomplish their mission. Develop, identify and agree on a list of action items that you and the facility staff will undertake to amalgamate pollution prevention into the facility activities.
Criteria to consider
The availability of disposal capacity, community and surroundings concerns, environmental justice goals, workers safety and exposure, expectancy of future regulations and resource consumption. Rank and rate all pollution prevention activities that reflect how the activity matches the decisive factor.
Conduct a management review
Select, agree and elect a professional committee to review on pollution prevention plans. One the committee has selected a prevention team and it has developed a ranked list of pollution prevention activities, you have to gain support from the upper management and staff to help in the implementing of the new plan on pollution prevention.
This opportunity will enable the upper management to show support to the environment friendly project for preventing pollution. The preventive staff working on the project should present a pollution prevention plan ranked list and call attention to the potential benefits of the effort. Get full support from the upper management on the project by making them understand the relationship between the pollution prevention plan programs and their impacts on the plant mission and the current environmental programs.
References
(n.d) Pollution prevention. Steps for developing facility pollution prevention plan. Retrieved from http://www.labtrain.noaa.gov/ppguide/ffpp_14.htm
(n.d). U.S department of energy office of science. Pollution prevention. Community and environment. Retrieved from www.anl.gov/Community_and_Environment/pollutionprevention.html
(n.d). Pollution prevention. Pollution prevention. Retrieved from http://www.alcosan.org/Education/PollutionPrevention/tabid/72/Default.aspx
(n.d). Pollution prevention. Pollution prevention. Retrieved from http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/hwtr/p2/index.html
Tam, Hayley. (2011). Pollution prevention. Pollution incident response planning by machinery or electrical equipment businesses. Retrieved from http://www.netregs.gov.uk/netregs/businesses/62287.aspx
Ratel, Kanel. (2010). pollution prevention. Pollution prevention. Retrieved from http://www.bnl.gov/ewms/pollutionpreve/WasteStream/default.asp#Hazardous Wastes
Staff Training- Case Study
Case Study
Name
Institution
Executive Summary
The various changes in modern management practices necessitated by globalization and advances in technology and communication have led to emergence of human capital as an important input in modern organizations. However, many organizations fail to respond to the needs of their work force and may suffer from poor employee performance and lack of job satisfaction. This may be witnessed when absenteeism rates increase and employees become increasingly demoralized.
However, it is organizations that fail to adopt appropriate human resource practices of motivation, recruitment and training, and employee relations that may lead to decline in employee performance and job satisfaction levels. However, the management can solve this by providing appropriate training and development to employees and also defining other benefits to award them and increase morale. Moreover, this will reduce pressure associated with assigned duties and enable employees reduce their stress levels. Therefore, top management should direct sufficient funds to training and development programs to achieve this objective.
Case Study
Many large companies and business organizations rely on the performance of its branches as a critique for gauging overall performance, and it is apparent branch managers operate under intense pressure to achieve the objectives and goals set-up by the organization. They are obliged to sustain their operations under tight budgets while expected to realize increased sales and financial returns to their organizations. However, the emergence of human capital as an invaluable input in modern organizations has led to failure of organizations that do not cater for the needs of their human resource (Jaksic, 2013). Therefore, it is apparent that an organization’s success in global market relies on the satisfaction of its workforce necessary for translation of activities into real financial returns.
The main problem facing the store is employee job performance and satisfaction (Jaksic, 2013). The neglect of an appraisal system by the former management has compounded the problems faced by the employees in the working environment. The employees in the store lack the sufficient skills and expertise thus does not find their job interesting, challenging, and motivating (Jaksic, 2013). This is witnessed through frequent absenteeism from work in the disguise of sick leaves. This is because the workforce is overloaded with work, which may lead to work related stress (Jaksic, 2013). As a result, the employees in the store appear less motivated and enthusiastic about the duties and roles they are assigned in the store, and the trips made to out-of-town retail shops is done with less dedication and interest. Moreover, this has led to decreasing sales as the store trails others in overall sales in the business.
Moreover, the former management of the store nurtured a poor relationship with its employees as it failed to carryout performance appraisal and refused to work on opinion surveys organized by the business. This may be attributed to rising telephone costs as employees seek opportunities to work elsewhere. However, the problems may be associated to the human resource practices employed by the former management (Jaksic, 2013). The practices related to the problems in the case study may result from failure of the management of the store to carryout performance appraisal in order to notify management of employee problems (Jaksic, 2013).
The problems also expose the management practice of recruitment and training as employees in the store do not have the sufficient skills to perform their duties leading work related stress and absenteeism (Jaksic, 2013). The former management also failed to recognize employee need for training and development in the annual survey to improve their skills. Lastly, it is important for the store to recognize what motivates their employees and prioritize motivation as a human resource practice (Jaksic, 2013). The store does not have any mechanism for motivating employees, which explains the declining motivation levels among the workforce.
However, as a branch manager it is possible to resolve the problems inherited from the former management by adopting a variety of remedies, to ensure the store prioritizes its human resource as an important input in the business. Firstly, the store should implement recommendations of the opinion survey and provide training and development to its employees in order to facilitate development of new skills and improve performance of tasks and role (Jaksic, 2013). Moreover, the store should provide anxiety management training to employees to avoid the pressure in work and delegate authority to avoid overburdening the twenty employees of the store. Employee morale can be increased if the business combines its training programs with defined benefits to its employees (Jaksic, 2013). This will also boost job satisfaction as work becomes interesting and motivating. The advice to top management would be to direct sufficient funds towards training and development programs to ensure high employee morale and job satisfaction, which will translate into real financial gains through increased sale of computer equipment.
Reference
Jaksic, M., & Jaksic, M. (2013). PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION. Montenegrin Journal of Economics, 9(1), 85-92. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1355247790?accountid=458
Statistical_Thinking_in_Healthcare
Case Study: Statistical Thinking in HealthCare
Student’s name
affiliation
course
Date
Any Pharmacies in the world can encounter problems during their day-to-day operations. In the case study provided, Ben Davis is a pharmacist assistant in an irregular problem. His manager, Juan de Pacotilla, fears to lose his job in case an improvement is not done to the day-to-day operations. Juan asks Ben to help him find an opportunity for improvement in the process of filling prescriptions. This case study will provide an explanation to the issue of medication errors that are dispensed in HMO pharmacy. Despite the dispensing error rates being low, more enhancements in pharmacy distribution systems are vital since the pharmacies dispense large volumes of medicines that even a low error can render into a huge number of error which in return may equate to great amounts of lawsuits equaling even bigger sums of money. Advanced research is needed into dispensing errors in and out- patient health care settings, such and community pharmacies worldwide (Salmasi, Long & Khan, 2016).
There are six types of errors that can take place within the pharmacological chain and pharmaceutical patient care thus: dispensing errors, transcription errors, prescribing faults, administration errors, across setting errors and prescription errors. A dispensing error can be described as a discrepancy between the prescription and the medication that the pharmacy distributes to the patient or to the ward on the root of this prescription, such as the dispensing a medicine with substandard pharmaceutical or informational quality (Chua & et.al, 2003).
When dispensing, errors are well-thought-out from the viewpoint that the quality of all pharmacy care on goings should be guaranteed by the pharmacist, this list can be prolonged by the addition of three other groupings: lack of detecting and correcting a prescribed error before dispensing; lack of detecting a manufactured error before dispensing; and lack of providing satisfactory patient counseling so as to prevent administration errors (Teagarden & et.al 2005). These error groupings occur in other sections of the pharmaceutical patient care chain however; they are nonetheless significant when one attempts to do a full assessment of the performance of the pharmacy.
The classifications of dispensing errors are as follows: When medicine is dispensed to the wrong patient, when wrong the medicine is dispensing, When a poor or stronger drug is dispensed, when medicine is dispensed at the wrong time, When wrong quantity of medicine is dispensed as well as the wrong dosage form, when an expired or almost to expiry medicine has been dispensed, if there has been a failure or an omission to dispense, inferior quality of medicine being dispensed an inaccurately compounded medicine being dispensed, wrongly labeling information when dispensing (Anacleto & et. Al, 2007).
Below is a process map describing the prescription filling process for HMO’s pharmacy, that specifies the major problems that the HMO’s pharmacy experiences
.
Suppliers
Inputs
Process
Output
Customers
Doctors
Patient
Prescription
Telephone
Computer
Printer
Drug directory
Medication
Dosage advice
bill
Patient
Suppliers
Inputs
Process
Output
Customers
Doctors
Patient
Prescription
Telephone
Computer
Printer
Drug directory
Medication
Dosage advice
bill
Patient
Below, is a diagram showing the use of the supplier, input, process steps, output, and customer (SIPOC) model to analyze the HMO pharmacy’s business process.
Process Map for filling a Prescription at HMO Pharmacy
The Causes of dispensing errors can be outlined by making inquiries from the practicing pharmacists through means of a survey or through root-cause analysis. A survey will measure the opinions and perceptions of the pharmacists while the root-cause analysis may come closer to reality. An example is a study done in a UK hospital in which the researchers uses semi structured interviews of pharmacy staff about self-reported dispensing (Anacleto & et. Al, 2007). Totally there were 106 error-producing conditions mentioned in these interviews. The most common causes of error that were mentioned from the most to the least included: being busy (21%), less operating staff members (12%), time limited (11%), tiredness of healthcare providers (11%), disruptions during dispensing (9.4%), and medicines that look-alike/sound-alike (8.5%) (Rickrode & et.al, 2007).
The process has been broken down into various groupings Based on the process map and research done on the subject of errors in medication dispensing cycle. Thus, Ordering, Transcribing, Dispensing, and Administering. In each of these four steps, there are a lot of probable areas for errors to take place. To begin with the ordering process, one can see, a wrong drug, a wrong dose, wrong route/form, an allergy or drug interaction. Secondly, the transcribing process, one can see a wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong route, wrong time, and wrong drug errors occurring (Knudsen et.al, 2007). Dispensing can have errors in wrong patient, wrong dose, wrong time, wrong route, incorrect labeling/drug ID, and allergy/drug interaction. Lastly, administering errors can entails, wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong drug, wrong route, wrong time/omitted and often consists of infusion pumps. Pharmacies have brought about various methods and strategies to reduce dispensing errors, depending on the various working stages of the pharmacies in the medication procedures and the progress of information technologies over the years (Beso, Franklin &Barber, 2005).
In a certain study, a research team investigated self-reports of community pharmacies to find the causes of dispensing errors. The research team recognized four causes: unreadable/ poor handwriting; look-alike and sound-alike medications; lack of operative controls; and lack of attentiveness caused by interruptions (Chua & et.al, 2003).
Medication dispensing has several effective alternatives that can reduce error rates. The use of bar code system which has helped reduce the dispensing error in US hospitals. The use of semi-automated medication cabinets from the use of carousel fill process help reduce rate of dispensing errors from (0.25 to 0.08) % as opposed to the 2 day manually shelving process.
Medication orders which were not automated and not readily available on patient care units are ordered as prescription requests and are faxed by pharmacists. The rate of dispensing error increases because once orders are filled they have to be verified and then transported. The rate of incorrectly filled orders would also increase from an average (2.1 to 2.3) %.
The interdepartmental request fill is a process where medication orders come from departments or clinics associated with the hospital such as cancer center, pain, neurology and others. The dispensing error was noted to be a minimum without the automated system. Despite the zero-margin error when an automated pharmacy carousel system was implemented in the clinics a quantity discrepancy was identified. This was caused by requests which only documented the dispensing errors because of the interdepartmental fills (Salmasi, Long & Khan, 2016). The automated pharmacy carousel system can also consist of bar code scanner, label printer, barcoded medication bins that allow an interface between both in the hospitals pharmacy information system. To finalize the study implementation of a computerized drug interaction system was used and measured in three periods. The first period the pharmacies implemented system but not physicians, second period pharmacies used the system and an average number of physicians, third period the pharmacies and the physician practices used the system. The interaction rate between the second and the third were the highest as compared to the first period and was reduced by an average percentage (Rickrode & et.al, 2007).
In conclusion, the rates of dispensing errors can only be reduced by implementation of an automated system. Most HMO pharmacies have various processing systems for pharmacy distribution but the need for improvement is very important. The checking of prescriptions has to be implemented to reduce the prescription errors and strategies should be implemented and correctly communicated to prevent administrative errors (Beso, Franklin &Barber, 2005).
References
Anacleto, T. A., Perini, E., Rosa, M. B., & César, C. C. (2007). Drug-dispensing errors in the
hospital pharmacy. Clinics, 62(3), 243-250. doi:10.1590/s1807-59322007000300007
Beso, A., Franklin, B. D., & Barber, N. (2005). The Frequency and Potential Causes of
Dispensing Errors in a Hospital Pharmacy. Pharmacy World & Science, 27(3), 182-190. doi:10.1007/s11096-004-2270-8
Chua, S., Wong, I. C., Edmondson, H., Allen, C., Chow, J., Peacham, J., . . . Grantham, J.
(2003). A Feasibility Study for Recording of Dispensing Errors and ???Near Misses??? in Four UK Primary Care Pharmacies. Drug Safety, 26(11), 803-813. doi:10.2165/00002018-200326110-00005
Costa, L. A., Valli, C., & Alvarenga, A. P. (2008). Medication dispensing errors at a public
pediatric hospital. Revista Latino-Americana De Enfermagem Rev. Latino-Am. Enfermagem, 16(5), 812-817. doi:10.1590/s0104-11692008000500003
Knudsen, P., Herborg, H., Mortensen, A. R., Knudsen, M., & Hellebek, A. (2007). Preventing
medication errors in community pharmacy: Frequency and seriousness of medication errors. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 16(4), 291-296. doi:10.1136/qshc.2006.018770
Rickrode, G. A., Williams-Lowe, M. E., Rippe, J. L., & Theriault, R. H. (2007). Internal
reporting system to improve a pharmacy’s medication distribution process. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 64(11), 1197-1202. doi:10.2146/ajhp060166
Salmasi, S., Long, C. M., & Khan, T. M. (2016). Interplay of medication errors and the
separation of dispensing. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 12(1), 171-172. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2015.07.004