Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Bring It On- December 2020 - S...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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3 4 • O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 Staff complete the form every day, recording times for when patients exit the OR, when rooms are cleaned and when next patients are wheeled in, with specific notes on why a turnover may have lasted longer than expected. "We've been able to easily implement good com- munication practices because we were visible and always talking with physicians and staff," says Karen MacDonald, MSN, RN, CNOR, RNFA, a sen- ior manager at Banner Baywood. The engaging and open workplace culture is something that has been developed over the past few years. "Our leadership team has been together for four years now," says Ms. Tjelmeland. "We really like to make work a fun, enjoyable place. We're all here to take great care of patients, which involves everybody in the department." Friendly competitions Improving turnover times wasn't just a priority of the center's leadership. Staff at Banner Baywood indicated they had the same goal when filling out their annual evaluations. They received points on their evaluations for meeting the 22-minute goal, which gave them extra incentive to decrease turnover times. To keep staff motivated and engaged in efforts to turnover rooms faster, leadership turned the process into fun competitions, using games to spark the team's interest. "We correlated the green sheet with some fun activities on our bulletin board in the hallway outside the ORs," says Ms. Tjelmeland. For example, a Kentucky Derby- themed competition involved assigning ORs to plastic horses, which were moved across lanes on the bulletin board based on the fastest recorded turnover times. Between cases, team members would run to check if they had a fast enough turnover time to make headway in the race. The winning horse was announced at a staff huddle. Leadership also created a football field bulletin board, on which surgeons' names were written on footballs. To reach the end zone, their OR team had to meet or exceed the established room turnover goal. "Games like this made surgeons and staff excited to do better," says Ms. Tjelmeland. Widespread adoption Banner Baywood's leaders speak about their team's accomplishments by emphasizing that implementing change is where the challenge lies. They say it takes commitment from leadership in all areas to own their part in the process, accept the responsibility for their team's role and embrace and support the changes necessary to improve room turnover times. The methods they implemented to improve room turnover times were designed to be easily replicable in other facil- ities. Instead of isolating the improvements to orthopedic surgery, Banner Baywood's leadership decided to incorporate their methods across the entire hospital and nine other facilities within its health system. The facility's staff and management are proud of the improvements they made. Change did not hap- pen overnight, however. The effort involved invest- ing time and energy into streamlining processes and channeling patients in and out of the OR in an effi- cient manner. "It takes a lot of work," says Ms. MacDonald. "We put forth the vision, but we also engaged the team to make it happen." OSM DOWN THE STRETCH Fun bulletin board contests keep staff engaged in process improvement initiatives.

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