1. You’ve been hired as a lean coordinator at a major hospital and your job desc
ID: 376597 • Letter: 1
Question
1. You’ve been hired as a lean coordinator at a major hospital and your job description requires you to look for ways to reduce costs and, from an operational perspective, improve patient outcomes. You’re looking at patient data and discover that between two or three times per month, a doctor will leave a sponge or other foreign object inside of a patient during an operation. It’s always a different doctor so it isn’t a question of a physician’s competence. You’re presenting a recommendation to senior management on how to eliminate the possibility of leaving sponges (or anything else) inside of a patient. In one to two paragraphs, describe your recommendation. (think of this as a process and not an individual failing)
Explanation / Answer
Dear Management,
I write to you to explain an issue which our hospiutal has been facing over quite some time. I have been looking at historical patient data, and there is one point which stands out: 2-3 times a month, a foreign object is left inside a patient during an operation. This is definitely an issue which is serious, as it can not only have implications on the patient's health, but can also have serious implications on the reputation of the hospital as a whole.
This is clearly a process failure, as the anomaly noted is not specific to any individual doctor. It has been happening across various doctors who have been performing surgeries. This would need a strong process guideline for us to be able to eliminate this issue.
My recommendation to avoid this issue would be the following:
A checklist of all the commodities to be used should be available in the operating theatre. All the commodities (sponges/syringe/any other foreign object) being used during the operation should initially be placed in a designated area in the operation theatre (It could be a simple rack). Post the operation, the doctor would have to ensure that all the equipment used will either have to be placed back in their place on the rack either for re-use or for disposal, but they will have to be placed back in their designated spot. While this might be a bit of extra work for the doctors iniitially, this will ensure discipline across all doctors going forward, and will also help doctors in ensuring there aren't such lapses so that they can focus on the much more important things - the operation itself!
This would be my recommendation as a lean co-ordinator, and request you to give me the support to go ahead and implement this recommendation.
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