Lean Project Management Paper

913 Words2 Pages

Now more than ever before, healthcare leaders are struggling with the provision of safe and competent care while utilizing fewer resources. This effort has resulted in an undesired consequence in which nurses are feeling overworked and under-appreciated. Both patients and nurses agree that the lack of resources without eliminating waste or improving efficiencies is one of the more important issues affecting medical care. (Brackett, Comer, & & Whichello, 2013)
Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital (IUHBMH) utilizes Lean principles to improve processes and eliminate waste. In an effort to improve patient outcomes, many healthcare organizations are turning to Lean in an effort to increase efficiency and add value to the patient …show more content…

We all work on projects in our everyday work life. We do not always recognize them as projects because they rarely have a distinct beginning and never end. The goal of Lean project management is to complete the project on-time, on-budget and within the planned scope. At IUHBMH, we prefer to do Rapid Improvement Events (RIE) as opposed to projects. Projects are much more complex and often fail. Projects fail for many reasons especially in healthcare. This industry is very complex, and projects usually take a long time to complete without clearly defined goals, objectives and timelines. Data collection is difficult, communication among leadership and staff is complicated and most often not timely. Above all, most hospitals are resistant to change. However, by implementing Lean prinicples with project management tools failures can be reduced. (Bove, …show more content…

All employees at IUHBMH have received training and education in Lean. When chosing a project to work on for this program there were many to choose from. As the Administrative Director (AD) of Critical Patient Services, two units are actively participating in Value Streams that report up to my service line. These two units are the Emergency Department and the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. As the leader of both of these units, I have been the process owner, participant or team leader of many rapid improvement events and projects over the past two years. The decision to work on the Nursing Orientation Team was made in collaboration with my preceptor to broaden my scope and experiences. This was a project idea that I have no experience with in turn would grow my knowledge base. The premise of this project was to improve nurse retention, reduce the length of orienation, standardize unit orientation throughout the organization, create 8 hour orientation shifts, and ready new nurses for the transition from graduate to

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