I'm Not Qualified to Lead This - Building a Drug Diversion Prevention Program

I'm Not Qualified to Lead This - Building a Drug Diversion Prevention Program

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation takes a different but vital angle: preventing drug diversion inside hospitals so controlled substances don’t end up harming staff or patients. Pharmacist and host Terri Vidals sits down with system pharmacy director Susan Jacobs, who openly shares how she built a diversion prevention programme from scratch with no budget, no committee and no fancy software. Susan calls it “a primer for success” and walks through the essentials step by step.

You’ll hear her start with day one basics: “You definitely need to do a full inventory count to make sure that you have accountability of every piece of narcotic that is in your organization.” From there, she stresses mapping who has access to drugs, how they’re stored, and where processes are breaking down. Susan is blunt about one common problem: “You can have tons of reports, but if nobody’s reviewing it and they’re not taking actionable steps, guess what?

You have months and months of unreconciled transactions that never show a closed loop system.” The episode is especially useful for healthcare leaders who feel unprepared or unqualified to run a diversion programme. Susan’s final message is that “everyone is qualified” when they care about patients, are willing to learn, and work as a team.

She offers practical ideas such as turning pharmacy technicians into “regulatory champions”, building simple checklists for suspected diversion, and using frequent QA reviews and subcommittees to keep the programme alive rather than letting it sit on paper. If you’re interested in how safe medication practices, strong leadership and supportive culture can protect both patients and staff, this candid chat will give you plenty to think about—and maybe a nudge to ask, “What’s happening with controlled substances in my organisation?”