The cornerstone of quality care

If you have visited the emergency department at Lions Gate Hospital recently, you’ll notice that the area has a lot less clutter.

“We removed 10 wire racks of stuff,” says registered nurse Michelle Connell. “Like, we removed copious amounts of clutter and really cleaned up and organized the place.”

A team of about 12 frontline nurses, manager and Lean Team staff worked hard one morning to reorganize the area to make it safer for patients and staff. The “blitz cleanup” was one of the many beneficial outcomes of the Four Cornerstone project, an initiative focused on improving hand hygiene (public reporting of data), the hospital’s Environmental Program (like the decluttering) and antimicrobial stewardship (Antibiotic Cycling Program) as well as standardizing certain protocols, making them more efficient (infection-control carts, management of patient-care utensils).

Michelle says many of the changes with the program came from those who knew what would work best: the staff.

“Everybody was expressing their ideas, really good ideas,” she says, “Everybody’s pretty passionate about infection control practises because at the end of the day, it saves lives. The team came together and worked together for the benefit of the work place – it’s a nicer place to work now.”

Andrew Tung, a workflow improvement coordinator at the hospital, says he was really impressed to see the LGH team come together over this project; particularly when they cleaned the emergency department area.

“It was really powerful to see them all there, working together and showing their dedication and owning the project,” he says emphatically. “Our purpose of doing this is to make sure our patients are in a safe, clean environment. This project reduces risk of infection and therefore makes the staff’s job easier and more gratifying. I think we are achieving that.”

And it’s that gratification, that ability to make a difference that Michelle says has improved spirits around the department.

“It really brought morale up,” she says. “People started getting really excited about the project and were offering their ideas of how things could be done better – the whole department was able to take responsibility and enjoy it.”