During FY21, I started my year off as a PET senior technician. At the beginning of the fiscal year my goals were to develop my knowledge in the quality side of PET manufacturing. With my pervious manager OTT meetings my personal development goal was to become QAD for the Omaha site. 2020, I started my training. Shortly afterwards the QAS position became open, and I applied for the position. Once I transitioned into my new role of QAS my goals shifted slightly.
Now that I was being submerged into the quality program, I set out to grow as much as possible. While in the first many months as a QAS Omaha experienced dramatic staff changes and shortage. During this time, I was able to step up and perform not only my new duties as a QA but also help with the operations side to ensure that our site was running smoothly. I worked closely with the site supervisor to help train new staff, perform day to day technician tasks, and remained in charge of inventory management.
The one area I did not have expected results in was my ability to multitasks during production runs. While our site supervisor had to perform production, I was in the general lab establishing a good workflow. Allocating different tasks to the new technicians while also performing the QA tasks. While supporting the operations side of production this led to rushing while reviewing documentation. It became apparent that I needed to allocate the lab job more effectively to ensure I had the proper amount of time and focus on the job at hand.
As quality assurance it is our job to ensure that the highest level of integrity to being held. In efforts to make a safe drug for our patients, it is our responsibility to guarantee our dedications to setting high ethical standards and always doing the right thing. One of the first lessons I learned on the job as a QA was to not be afraid to admit that even QA’s make mistakes and aren’t perfect. When you find a mistake that has been make it is important to report it and get the problem fixed.
Not only to warrant from this occurring again at your site but to also educate other sites on problems that would arise. This makes other QA’s aware of certain issues helping them prevent the problem. In December of 2020 the Omaha site experience a damaged rTLC Scanner while I was on PTO. I was asked to come in while on PTO for QA signatures. Without hesitation I was accountable to the Omaha site.
Indicating my determination and passion for the work we do. While finding my footing in the QA role it was important to remain open minded and inclusive. While establishing my expectations from the Omaha staff along with accepting constructive feedback on how different tasks can be performed and still within guidelines of our SOPs. At Cardinal we use Teams as communication platform to reach everyone across the network. We at Omaha work closely with different departments of Cardinal. During our investigation process we work with compliance, microbiology, and quality management. For easy collaboration I created a Teams group for the Omaha investigations. This helped with communication across the different departments and within the Omaha staff to effectively and timely complete the require documentation.
Taking on the new role of QAS in September has had its challenges. Working closely with the site supervisor to provide support on both the quality and operations side, FY21 was a year of learning new skills and developing my thought process transitioning from an operator to quality assurance. Although multitasking can be useful, I believe I learned that focusing on the task at hand one at a time was most beneficial while learning a new job. In FY22 the two areas I want to focus on is more involvement in the radiation safety program and developing better aseptic practices as the site level. Due to have a brand-new technician staff it is important to instill good practices at the start of their careers.
