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Calderdale Royal Hospital improves service delivery with Lean Healthcare Academy BIT NVQ 2 course

West YorkshireLearning NewsVirtual College by Netex

You've heard the old saying ‘how do you eat an elephant? - a BIT at a time!' Well the saying is equally true of implementing Lean into big organisations with complex pathways and issues.

You've heard the old saying ‘how do you eat an elephant? - a BIT at a time!' Well the saying is equally true of implementing Lean into big organisations with complex pathways and issues.

There are many ways to improve current levels of performance bt the best by far is to utilise the untapped creative force in your workforce, empowering people to make changes in a supportive environment.

The West Yorkshire based Lean Healthcare Academy, leaders in the field of training, implementation and sustaining improvement activities across the whole health economy offer the Business Improvement Techniques (BIT) NVQ Level 2 as part of their range of Lean courses. The BIT NVQ level 2 is a fantastic route into Lean for all levels of your workforce.

Fiona Kirkpatrick, Service Improvement Facilitator and Samantha Saville – Clinical Governance Facilitator were part of the 10 strong multi-disciplinary team at Calderdale Royal Hospital who recently completed the BIT NVQ Level 2 – Process Improvement course.

Fiona said ”We decided to do the BIT NVQ course to gain a better insight in to Lean and how it can be used to streamline our department, the course provided a great mixture of the theoretical along with practical implementation of Lean principles.”

One of the projects undertaken during the course looked at the blood sampling pathway. The results of the process mapping lead Karen English, Blood Bank Manager, to completely refurbish the department to streamline the physical movement of personnel and information, reducing waste and generating time and cost savings.

Her colleague Samantha said “Taking the course has brought other benefits on top of learning the Lean techniques. The NVQ team covered Radiology, Medical Records, Pathology, Clinical Audit and Service Improvement, these departments now have a link in the people who attended the course and we all follow each others progress and continue to learn”

Karen Keyworth also completed the BIT NVQ, when asked why she decided to undertake the course Karen said “It was recommended to me after I saw the positive effects in another department where Visual Management had been effectively implemented.

If you would like to improve the service delivery in your Trust through our BIT NVQ, Lean Masterclass or other courses, contact Kim Holden on 01943 885084 or email kim.holden@leanhealthcareacademy.co.uk