Sunday, Sep 26 - Expo Hall Opening
Sunday, Sep 26 - Job Fair
Monday,
Sep 27 - AWHONN's Block Party
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Title: Scheduled Cesarean Section: Start Time Performance Improvement Initiative
Discipline: Women’s Health (WH), Professional Issues (PI), Childbearing (CB), Advanced Practice (AP)
Learning Objectives:
Submission Description:- Recognize that performance initiatives should be data driven with measurable results for patients, members of the health care team, and the organization
- Acquire the knowledge that a collaborative teamwork approach to problem solving can heighten levels of professionalism and have more positive results in producing effective change.
- Identify that on-going review and sharing of the performance improvement data is critical to the continued sustainable success of the process and culture changes.
Service efficiency and effectiveness are important concerns for many hospitals today. This is particularly true in the Operating Room (OR), which is one of a hospital’s largest revenue producing cost centers. The Scheduled Cesarean Section (C/S) project began in 2005 with the perception that cases were delayed and the Obstetrical OR (OB OR) was run in a manner that did not meet the surgeon, anesthesia, or the patient’s needs. These perceptions often led to frustration and hostility among team members which greatly affected employee, physician, and patient satisfaction and poor morale among the OB OR staff. This performance improvement (PI) project was developed to identify barriers and put into place recommended system changes to improve OB OR efficiency and effectiveness, increase teamwork and pride, thereby improving overall satisfaction among caregivers.
To accomplish the PI project a task force consisting of physicians, LDR staff nurses, LDR leadership, and anesthesia was formed to enhance productivity and efficiency in the OR that would balance patient safety and staff satisfaction.
The development and implementation of effective, data-driven changes must occur. It was then decided that baseline data was needed to validate the physician’s perceptions and evaluated any improvements that may occur. Review and analysis of the retrospective data by the task force identified three major reasons for delay. Physician, nursing, and anesthesia individual behaviors were identified as the top three barriers to getting scheduled C/S cases started on time. The task force discussed actions and strategies that would effectively change the behaviors of the groups involved. The first strategy that was determined to have the greatest influence was to have all parties involved use the same definition as it related to start time of the procedure. Start time was defined for all disciplines involved. Next the task force considered what actions would best help the OR staff to reach the goal set at 90% of all scheduled C/S cases starting on time.
After reaching and consistently maintaining the goal of 90% on time starts the unit and the organization continue to reap the benefits gained from the scheduled C/S on-time PI project for the past 5 years. From a quality perspective, the project results have improved throughput in the OR, professionalism and collaboration between disciplines, and created a positive work environment for the clinicians and staff members.
