This team has safety and efficiency in the bag

Warren, Heidi and Anna are registered nurses on Richmond Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and High Acuity Unit (HAU). Using the Releasing Time to Care methodology, the team set out to improve the way safety supplies are stored.

The opportunity

A lack of consistency in the storage of safety supplies in patient rooms meant more time for nurses to ensure all items were there at the start of a shift. Missing items could pose a risk in the event of an emergency like a Code Blue. There was also no way to know for sure that supplies had not been touched by contaminated hands and this caused a lot of unused supplies to be discarded for infection control purposes. We needed a way to store the supplies so that they’d be easy to find and easy to clean and reuse.

The solution

“Our plan was to place all the safety items in plastic bags, tie them securely, and hang them on a hook on the wall on either side of the at the head of the bed,” said Anna.

A sign indicates what supplies should be there and the bags are wiped down after each patient for infection control. An RN changes the bag in the case of C.diff or MRSA. A sealed bag also ensures there are no missing items.

Some bumps on the road to success

Many of the adhesive hooks used to hang the bags fell off the wall and had to be replaced with hooks that screw to the wall. A communication gap resulted in some staff not being aware of the change and removing the supplies from the bags and placing in the old locations, removing supplies and re-closing bags, or leaving bags empty. With some follow up emails, education and including updated at huddles and on the board, these issues were largely resolved.

Measuring the impact

This team’s safety bag system reduced the time required to check the supplies by 69% and saved an estimated $25,000 per year in discarded supplies!

“Reducing costs is always a great thing, and the time saved can now be spent with patients and families and that’s so important for quality care,” said Anna.

More information

PowerPoint presentation
Visit the Releasing Time to Care page on VCH Connect (internal link only)
View the Releasing Time to Care evaluation report

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