A day in the life of Jason Trick – ConvaTec Associate Director, Post Market Quality Engineering

Kariéra

Jason Trick – ConvaTec Associate Director, Post Market Quality Engineering Greensboro, US

6.15am – Beep, Beep, Beep, its 6:15 AM and my alarm awakens me. I hear the hustle and bustle of my 2 eldest girls running around upstairs sounding like a heard of elephants. They are getting ready for school while my wife is cooking breakfast. I know it’s going to be a busy day and I should get up and get going. I must be at work prepared for a meeting at 7:30.

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7:30am – It’s my first meeting of the day and I have my energy drink in hand. My colleagues and I are having a phone conversation with an important vendor in Germany regarding a quality concern. We are all prompt to the meeting and the vendor doesn’t call in. We get an email that they are having a problem with the conference number. After a few minutes, we are able to get them on the phone. It was a very good call and we decide on action items and who is accountable. We agree to have another phone call in two days to discuss progress and outcomes.

8:15am – Back at my desk, I begin to sift through my emails to answer everything that has come in since I left the previous evening. I work closely with peers from all around the world including England, Slovakia, Denmark and many other countries. ConvaTec is a global company so you have to adapt to working with others in different time zones. I make good progress on most of the important emails, but as usual, time runs out.

9:30am – It’s time for my 2017 performance review. I meet my manager in her office and discuss the trials and tribulations of everything that occurred in the previous year. The review went well and I left with a sense of accomplishment for all I had achieved in 2017. I am determined to make 2018 even more successful!

1.30pm – I have a call with the Vice President of Global Quality Management Systems and others to plan for implementing changes that are required by a new EU medical device regulation that is taking effect in 2020. We are planning and implementing early so we have ample time to get into compliance. We quickly realize we have a lot of work ahead of us and plan to meet next week to continue to work on the logistics of implementing the changes.

 

2:00pm – It is time for our weekly complaint escalation meeting. We take all customer complaints very seriously as we never want a customer to have a negative experience with our products. Sometimes an incoming complaint is not as clear as we need it to be to ensure we process it correctly. A post market surveillance team meets weekly to discuss the complaints in question. We have members from many functions such as medical review, post market quality engineering, clinical, complaint analysts and more. We spend the hour discussing all the complaints with outstanding questions. As a team, we determine the best path forward for all complaints. Some of these complaints require us to reach back out to the customer for more information. It is always rewarding leaving this meeting knowing how seriously everyone takes our customers’ experience.

 

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3:00pm – I don’t even leave the meeting room or seat I was in for the last meeting. Members from my team and our Metrics Central team enter while others from the previous meeting exit. Our Metrics Central team provides monthly dashboards and key performance indicator metrics for the quality department. Without them, we wouldn’t know how we were performing to expectations. The task at hand is to agree on content for a post market surveillance quarterly executive management review. My colleague from Metrics Central presents his suggestions for the content. All members of the team join in on the conversation and we successfully determine what will be presented.

4:00pm – I am back in my office on a conference call with a vendor. We are discussing a statement of work they provided earlier. This vendor provides supplementary services to enhance our complaint intake and processing software. I have been working with them to develop this proposal for several weeks as I want to make sure it is comprehensive and protects ConvaTec’s interests. This upgrade will provide us a much-needed efficiency gain. After 30 minutes, we have worked through the last of the unresolved details. I can’t wait to implement these changes!

4:45pm - It’s time to head home. Today was a great day. I take a moment to reflect on everything I did before shutting down my computer. I can’t help but to smile thinking about the fact that I work with such a great team of professionals. I have worked for several companies, but the teamwork, collaboration, and sense of satisfaction I get from my job and ConvaTec is like nothing I have experienced before. On my way home, I remembered I promised my eldest daughter I would take her around the neighborhood to deliver girl scout cookies this evening