Lean Thinking for Specialty Trainees (SW259)

Human Factors

Human Factors (often referred to as ergonomics) is an established scientific discipline used in many safety-critical industries. Human Factors approaches underpin current patient safety and quality improvement science, offering an integrated, evidenced and coherent approach to patient safety, quality improvement and clinical excellence. Using simple systems approaches and techniques drawn from LEAN & other Continuous Improvement (CI) Practices, clinicians can examine their own practices and those of their teams and put in place checking mechanisms that minimise the risk of human error creeping into their interactions with patients… and with each other. You will be aware of human factors but here we will explore integrating it into a continuous improvement and lean culture.

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement, often known as Kaizen is, as the name suggests, a practice of constantly re-examining and improving our value-adding processes – so those processes that run directly to the patient – with the intention of refining such processes over a period of time, to positively impact on the:

• efficiency of the process (how easy is it to make it happen successfully).
• effectiveness of the process (how much positive difference does it make to the patient).
• economic use of resources (ensuring good husbandry and delivering best value from resource utilisation)
• Continuous improvement is based upon a belief that a recurrent and persistent focus on making positive incremental change over time is far less disruptive than major change initiatives. Driving regular, incremental, change is also far more efficient than making occasional major changes to processes and procedures that are embedded in culture and work practice. This results in a much better chance of such changes being accepted and implemented without resistance from involved staff and patients.
• Our Lean Thinking Programme is designed to give Doctors and other supporting clinicians a means of controlling and managing their working environments and critical working practices, to become more efficient and effective in how they deliver value to their patients, whilst making best use of those resources available to them. It also addresses key issues around Human Factors, enabling those same Doctors and clinicians to create and maintain a low-risk environment in which they interact with their patients and with each other.

The Lean Thinking Programme is delivered over two, half-day, sessions, with a total contact time of approx. eight hours. It will be delivered by virtual facilitator-led learning, with input from the facilitator, time for personal reflection, and virtual break out groups so you can discuss the practical application with fellow Doctors. We will also watch videos to deepen our learning experience.

Following on from this course we have Influencing and Engaging for Change

Mandatory: Postgraduate Secondary Care Resident Doctor, or ST1

This programme has been designed to so that participants will be able to:

• Know how think ‘effective’ with your time, priorities, resources and commit to personal and organisational effectiveness
• Recognise how to prioritise around the most important things
• Maximise value to your ultimate customers and reduce human-led risk to a minimum
• To make a total commitment to personal and organisational continuous improvement
• Maximise individual and collective potential to achieve upgraded results
• Know how past experiences and our unique personalities have an impact on performance and risk

NOTE: This course is elective, not mandatory.