In 1986, Dr Don Berwick from Boston attended a 4-day seminar run by Dr W. Edwards Deming in Washington. Dr Berwick was a 40 year old paediatrician who was also interested in health care management and improving quality and productivity. Dr Deming was an 86 year old engineer and statistician who, when he was in his 40’s, helped the US to improve the quality and productivity of the industrial processes supporting the US and Allies in WWII.
Don Berwick describes attending the seminar as an emotionally challenging life-changing experience when he realised that his well-intended attempts to improve quality by inspection-and-correction was a counterproductive, abusive approach that led to fear, demotivation and erosion of pride-in-work. His blinding new clarity of insight led directly to the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in the USA in the early 1990’s.
One of the tenets of Dr Deming’s theories is that the ingrained beliefs and behaviours that erode pride-in-work also lead to the very outcomes that management do not want – namely conflict between managers and workers and economic failure.
So, an explicit focus on improving pride-in-work as an early objective in any improvement exercise makes very good economic sense, and is a sign of wise leadership and competent management.
Last week a case study was published that illustrates exactly that principle in action. The important message in the title is “restore the calm”.
One of the most demotivating aspects of health care that many complain about is the stress caused a chaotic environment, chronic crisis and perpetual firefighting. So, anything that can restore calm will, in principle, improve motivation – and that is good for staff, patients and organisations.
The case study describes, in detail, how calm was restored in a chronically chaotic chemotherapy day unit … on Weds, June 19th 2019 … in one day and at no cost!
To say that the chemotherapy nurses were surprised and delighted is an understatement. They were amazed to see that they could treat the same number of patients, with the same number of staff, in the same space and without the stress and chaos. And they had time to keep up with the paperwork; and they had time for lunch; and they finished work 2 hours earlier than previously!
Such a thing was not possible surely? But here they were experiencing it. And their patients noticed the flip from chaos-to-strangely-calm too.
The impact of the one-day-test was so profound that the nurses voted to adopt the design change the following week. And they did. And the restored calm has been sustained.
What happened next?
The chemotherapy nurses were able to catch up with their time-owing that had accumulated from the historical late finishes. And the problem of high staff turnover and difficultly in recruitment evaporated. Highly-trained chemotherapy nurses who had left because of the stressful chaos now want to come back. Pride-in-work has been re-established. There are no losers. It is a win-win-win result for staff, patients and organisations.
So, how was this “miracle” achieved?
Well, first of all it was not a miracle. The flip from chaos-to-calm was predicted to happen. In fact, that was the primary objective of the design change.
So, how what this design change achieved?
By establishing the diagnosis first – the primary cause of the chaos – and it was not what the team believed it was. And that is the reason they did not believe the design change would work; and that is the reason they were so surprised when it did.
So, how was the diagnosis achieved?
By using an advanced systems engineering technique called Complex Physical System (CPS) modelling. That was the game changer! All the basic quality improvement techniques had been tried and had not worked – process mapping, direct observation, control charts, respectful conversations, brainstorming, and so on. The system structure was too complicated. The system behaviour was too complex (i.e. chaotic).
What CPS revealed was that the primary cause of the chaotic behaviour was the work scheduling policy. And with that clarity of focus, the team were able to re-design the policy themselves using a simple paper-and-pen technique. That is why it cost nothing to change.
So, why hadn’t they been able to do this before?
Because systems engineering is not a taught component of the traditional quality improvement offerings. Healthcare is rather different to manufacturing! As the complexity of the health care system increases we need to learn the more advanced tools that are designed for this purpose.
What is the same is the principle of restoring pride-in-work and that is what Dr Berwick learned from Dr Deming in 1986, and what we saw happen on June 19th, 2019.
To read the story of how it was done click here.