Four times per year, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics’ Quality Improvement Program hosts a 2-Day Lean Training Seminar for all staff members. The program provides an introduction to lean concepts in healthcare through the use of a simulated emergency room filled with popsicle stick patients. Throughout the training, which combines lecture elements on…
Seep Weep Leak
Seep. Weep. Leak. What’s In A Word? Improvement, manufacturing, and failure analysis [ This post is an application of the ideas expressed in our Series of Posts about Root Cause and Failure Modes. Feel free to review previous posts here and here. ] I’ve mentioned the truck repair portion of my life before. It taught…
Failure Assessments – Root Cause (RCA)
Inevitably we encounter failure. Everything, every process, everywhere; we all have been at the point of failure of something. By definition, we understand failure to be “the lack of success.” Improvement sciences tends to spend a fair amount of effort dissecting failures to produce success in future implementation. One strategy is Root Cause Analysis (RCA)….
Failure Assessments – Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
Inevitably we encounter failure. Everything, every process, everywhere; we all have been at the point of failure of something. By definition, we understand failure to be “the lack of success.” Improvement sciences tends to spend a fair amount of effort dissecting failures to produce success in future implementation. One strategy is Failure Mode and Effects…
When The P-D-S-A Cycle Is Inverted
This week a big practice change is occurring for many healthcare institutions. A scholarly journal article [credit to the author, Thorsten Perl from the University Medical Centre in Goettingen, Germany] was published earlier this month that stated some contamination issues with the use of the enFlow fluid warmer cartridge system. Soon after the publication, the…
The Ketchup Catch-All
I walked into one of the cafeterias on campus this week, stopping at the napkin dispenser, I paused to see the wonderful sight below: The problem was clear, either people are messily applying ketchup/mustard on their items and/or the dispensers leak ketchup/mustard all over the counter. Based on the picture above, its probably the latter….
Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change
I recently had the opportunity to attend a University Learning and Development 2-Day training seminar based on the book, Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change. [ Amazon link to purchase ] As part of an ongoing effort to provide training, the University of Iowa offers some funds for professional development for staff members to…
Strategic Plan
As part of our academic mission, the College of Medicine charges each department with creating and sustaining a self study improvement plan to advance goals and recognized deficiencies. To date, we’ve invested months into the pre-work stages including: outside consultants, focus groups, survey work and large group meetings necessary to identify direction in our proposed…
The Best Gift You Can Give
The best gift you can give someone is your time. Because when you give your time, you are giving a portion of your life you can never get back. — Anonymous Quote Each year, I’d like to take the chance and reflect on gifts during the season of giving, here is the first such annual…
Poster-ized!
With the 2018 IHI National Forum complete, [IHI National Forum], we thought we’d talk about the poster we submitted and presented in Orlando this year. You can read up on the process, but the poster presentation allows small scale focus on solution building on a large variety of health care topics at a glance. This…
A Quality Improvement Blog 