Table 2 Improvement principles used at the A&E
Principle | Description of the principle |
|---|---|
Visualize | All people involved in the care process should have an overview of what happens, where one's colleagues are and where the patient is in the care chain. |
Link patient care activities | The various activities that compose a patient's care process should, if possible, be linked together or even be performed in parallel. |
Takt (work pace) | Different activities can take different time, but the goal is to decrease the variability in the time to complete each step in the process and to achieve a steady work pace to meet projected demand. |
First-time quality | By getting things right the first time, quality is improved and the need for rework is reduced. |
Standardize | To the extent possible, patient care processes should be standardized to reduce wasteful patient-to-patient variability. |
Continual improvement | Processes and practices can be adjusted several times-by testing, evaluating, and trying again, using a scientific approach-before work flows smoothly |