No one could have imagined the impact of COVID-19 on every level of health care delivery, including its frontline workers: the nurses, doctors, and other key team members who directly provide patient care. Health care workers are driven by compassion and moral responsibility to perform their duties with diligence, consistency, and patient centricity. Yet, the uncertain consequences of a potentially life-threatening new disease can introduce feelings of personal insecurity and team disconnection, especially at the onset of a pandemic crisis. It also creates a unique opportunity to test and validate measures that aim to improve decision-making, communication, and collaboration and that provide meaningful recognition, 4 of the essential elements included in the AACN Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments.1At Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, we adopted an interactive process several years ago that incorporates the concept of Lean thinking, a team-driven method derived from the Toyota Manufacturing System with important applications to health care. Lean is essentially an approach to management where employees become engaged and play an active role in helping determine outcomes; they are entrusted to uncover the root causes of problems, create and implement solutions, and provide education to others. Process standardization and waste reduction are key principles of the approach, which is guided by interprofessional interactions that are geared toward continuous improvement.2This Lean approach is illustrated in the management of stock inventory in interventional radiology (IR), where our team collaborated to identify a strategy and embrace digital tools, including barcode scanning, to establish an improved workflow, to reduce waste, and to make the best use of employee time. Establishing a “pull” system approach to inventory supply assures the consistent availability and reachability of supplies, as opposed to a less interactive “push” system, where decisions made by an overseeing manager may lead to wasteful oversupply, inefficient workflow, and frustrated team members.Using the Lean 5S workplace organization technique, we collectively arrived at solutions to manage our inventory, keeping in mind our limitations, including storage capacity.3 The 5S stands for sort (seiri), straighten/set in order (seiton), shine/scrub (seiso), standardize (seiketsu), and sustain (shitsuke). To implement the technique, we began by separating necessary items from those red-tagged for termination. Then, we designated a specific location for each item and clearly marked them. Next, we performed a general “clean-up” that included removing old labels, refuse, and anything posing a safety risk; we then checked the work environment for good air quality and appropriate temperature, humidity, and lighting. By using color-coding, Kanban bins, and organization labels and then assigning responsibility to our team members, we ensured consistency and enabled easy identification of unwanted changes. Finally, we documented our standardized work and responsibilities to preserve long-term maintenance.A cleaner, organized, and more efficient workplace improves safety and productivity and nurtures collegiality. According to an interventional radiology staff member, “This process has created a sense of unity among the doctors, nurses, and the technologists which in the long run has improved patient care” (Andrew Huntsman, IR staff technologist).The heart of the Lean process and an important opportunity for interprofessional interaction is the visual presentation of ideas using a visual management board (VMB). The VMB provides a forum for regular engagement by our nurses, technologists, and providers to discuss and prioritize new improvement project ideas and report updates of those in progress. The process is systematic and organized and allows teams to weigh in and focus on specific tasks at hand.When considering project ideas, we collectively determine their impact and difficulty level and then categorize each as a “just do it,” where minimal institutional support is required and the task can ordinarily be completed in 3 days, or as an “active project” that requires time and possibly additional resources to complete. The team may vote upon the idea to sponsor a family in need during the holidays as a “just do it,” whereas a project aimed to decrease wait times for outpatients awaiting their procedures, one deemed high in impact but low in difficulty, would require data collection to see if staggering patient appointment times would serve as a useful improvement measure. The response of using the VMB by the team has been uniformly positive: Close personal interactions are key to the success of the Lean process but may become challenged during a public health emergency, when necessary physical separation can cause disconnection and uncertainty. Cawcutt et al4 emphasized that strategies for health care workers during a crisis should include a plan for education and systemwide communication and methods to support a sense of civic duty and collegial support. Rosenberg5 further elaborated that resilience, commonly defined as “the process of adapting (well) in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of threat” is multifactorial, with individual, community, and existential components that require deliberate actions to maintain connections.The necessity for social distancing during COVID-19 created a paradigm shift and called for an alternative way to remain connected, organized, and productive. We introduced an electronic visual tool, Kanban Tool (Shore Labs), that allows team members to safely and easily collaborate in real time.6 The online Kanban Board provides an overview of the work status of the projects and simplifies team collaboration and communication. The board consists of a “drag and drop” system of columns of color-coded tiles to provide task organization and status. Each tile can be expanded with a click to display the owner, description, and progress of the project idea. Columns are labeled to identify our specific needs, including our True North goals; new, active, and completed projects; and staff appreciations. File attachments allow data and information to be readily shared. Via the Kanban Tool phone app, each team member can maintain safe distance guidelines yet remained closely involved in the process.6 This has proven to be an important component of maintaining team collaboration during a stressful period.To further bolster team support, we created the Stay Safer Campaign, a program designed to help sublimate staff fears and uncertainty into an interactive process of team building. Our routine IR morning briefing and afternoon debriefing sessions serve as a primary vehicle to allow for consistent communication of staff and patient care-related issues. The briefings were enhanced to include an open-forum discussion for COVID-19–related issues and other opportunities for positive interactions. This included daily presentations of scenarios, where team members would analyze a situation, identify the strengths and shortcomings of the actions that were taken, and then make suggestions that would positively impact patient safety and staff well-being. One such discussion resulted in the creation of a team approach for personal protective equipment donning and doffing using a spotter system to help minimize potential staff contamination. The Stay Safer Campaign also included the creation of a staff Achieve Better Communication and Wellness Board, where evidence-based articles, concepts, exercise, safety tips, and activities for improving communication and staff mental and physical wellness and inter-connectedness are shared. An IR staff nurse encapsulated the general positive response of the team to the changes: “Consistent briefing and debriefing create staff cohesion and a higher level of mutual respect, which was accentuated by the Stay Safer Campaign” (Kyle Slack, IR staff nurse).Perhaps one of the most personally meaningful actions for achieving a healthy work perspective involves expression of gratitude. Bono et al7 demonstrated that the practice of writing down a few sentences each week about things that make one grateful translated to improved working relationships. In their study, those who expressed gratitude were more optimistic, felt better about their lives, exercised more, and had fewer visits to physicians.7 Several of our staff members voluntarily reported positive feedback after being encouraged to use phone applications featuring electronic journals that prompt users on a daily basis to record their thoughts and feelings by answering a few reflective questions, such as “What are you thankful for today?” “What is something that went well today?” and “What positive moments thing stood out for you today?” Some of the staff members also stated that such daily exercises have helped them to remain calm and allowed them to place work-related stresses and events in a positive perspective, translating to better work relationships and patient care.7The success of these improvement measures was demonstrated on a recent survey, which showed an increase in 25% of staff members who feel there is improved interprofessional communication and adequate support for their wellness as an employee.Meaningful recognition is a vital component of a team-driven improvement process. One of the most important aspects of the VMB is staff appreciation. Staff members may acknowledge the special contributions or achievements made by coworkers that are then announced by the weekly VMB leader. The announcements are listed in a separate column on the Kanban Board and are always presented at the end of sessions because they underscore the value of the input of each team member, a key component of Lean. The completion of 25 team projects is also rewarded with a well-deserved celebratory lunch.Challenging times in health care underscore the importance of recognition of and adherence to standards, such as those provided by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, that are geared toward maintaining a healthy work environment. Our experience has also taught us that interprofessional interactions become more valuable when they are driven by a mutual passion for improvement and where the lines that define our respective job roles are intentionally blurred to allow us to work together to optimize patient care.