This My CUH Story is from Janek Truszkowski, senior procurement systems and business intelligence manager.
What’s your role in our hospitals?
I have the rather grand title of senior procurement systems and business intelligence manager. What that ultimately boils down to is that I’m in charge of the technical side of the procurement department – from supporting colleagues with our ordering systems, to data analysis, e-commerce, systems administration, anything like that.
As a member of the department’s senior management team, I also regularly support with other operational issues, such as coordinating personal protective equipment (PPE) supply throughout the pandemic.
Tell us a bit about your CUH journey
Way back in 2008, fresh out of university, I joined the Trust as part of the medical equipment library, supplying equipment to wards and clinics throughout the hospital. Being honest, it was supposed to just be temporary! But it’s always been very important to me to be contributing to ‘the public good’ and actually making a positive difference to people. Working at CUH was a very good way to achieve that.
Before too long I began rotating through the various sections of clinical engineering, doing more technical work maintaining and repairing medical devices. After four years in the department, I spotted an opportunity as a business intelligence analyst here in procurement, which seemed a good chance to make use of my mathematical background to develop our ability to analyse purchasing activity. From there, I worked my way up to take charge of procurement systems after my previous manager left the Trust, and then eventually I took a step up in seniority to take on my current post.
What does a usual day look like?
I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a usual day! It’s an incredibly varied role, I might be bug fixing or testing a new bit of software one minute, then meeting with senior clinicians about PPE, then be involved in a national working group on data standards. It can sometimes feel like there’s a lot of plates to keep spinning, but you never know what’s around the corner.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I think that the variety is a big part of it, there’s something new every day. Ultimately I’m a problem solver though.
My favourite days are those where I can do something clever to solve an issue or make a process more efficient.
Tell us about something that really stands out to you.
Obviously the last 18 months or so have stood out, it’s been like nothing any of us had ever encountered before. I remember sitting in a planning meeting, hearing reports on what was happening in northern Italy, and just thinking ‘oh dear, this is actually going to be very serious’. We had to cope with severe disruptions to the supply chain, a desperate need for PPE, the need to provide equipment and consumables to rapidly expanding intensive care capacity, all while radically re-shaping our own service.
It was a tough enough time for us in procurement, so I can’t even imagine what it must have been like on the front line. I can only say that I’m thankful and proud that we could make some contribution to enabling clinical teams to safely care for our patients. What it has shown is the value of building bridges and collaboration between different teams.
As an organisation I feel we’re working a lot closer together than we’ve ever done before, and I really hope that continues when the pandemic is finally over, as it can only make us stronger.
Anything else you’d like to tell us about you, your role, your team or working at CUH.
I’d just like to give a shout out to the entire procurement and supply chain team – it can be easy to overlook their contribution unless something goes wrong. So I hope we can all spare a little appreciation for all the times they’ve done their job unnoticed.