Using Lean Management to Improve the Nursing Admission Process for COVID-19 Patients in the Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Safe and efficient operational workflows in nursing care can alleviate workloads, enhance quality of care, and improve job satisfaction. A recent survey indicates that the admission process for patients with COVID-19 in nursing care is excessively lengthy due primarily to the waiting time for physicians to enter the ward, external support, and frequent reorganization of medical materials. Inadequate organization measures have resulted in requisite materials not being centralized, leading to increased travel times, interruptions in nursing records maintenance, unprofessional explanations, and time-consuming consent form signing processes. In this project, lean management was implemented to reduce the time spent on the nursing admission process for patients with COVID-19. The nursing admission process and job responsibilities were revised. Furthermore, new policies were implemented, including introducing remote consent form signing, using intelligent digital health education assistants, revising related inventory processes, and planning admission nursing carts to streamline the admission process. The average processing time in the isolation room was reduced by 30.5% from 105 minutes to 73 minutes; the average time spent by nurses on the admission process was reduced by 34.1% from 504 minutes to 332 minutes; and nursing satisfaction levels rose from 55.4% to 82.7%. In this project, lean management was used to investigate the nursing admission process for patients with COVID-19 and a value stream map was compiled to identify low-value activities within the process. Through the implementation and standardization of project measures, processing time was effectively reduced, manual labor was minimized, and job satisfaction improved.