9:57am Three nurses still taking turns trying to open drawer. Lots of banging noise, reverberating through the entire ward.
9:58am Nurse calls Maintenance. Now two patients waiting for the supplies.
10:37am Maintenance staff arrives with large rolling toolbox, pulled off of another task. He dissassembles the cabinet to open it up. Cheers of relief.
10:38am Groans of dismay - the needed supplies are not in the drawer. Out of stock!
10:39am Nurses phone other wards and central supplies, searching for stock of needed items. Two patients still waiting. Three nurses still scrambling.
10:41am Another ward has four available ! Nurse leaves to go get two.
10:48am Nurse returns with two; staff disperses to treat patients.
11:03am Maintenance completes the reassembly of the cabinet.
11:05am Conversation between maintenance and a nurse indicates that this is the "second time that drawer's been stuck shut. Somebody should do something about it. But nobody will! (Laughter)"
All of this waste adds nothing to the patient experience - it makes it worse. It adds nothing to the staff's experience, other than chaos and frustration. It costs money, disrupts care, and interrupts the flow of the daily work.
Many nursing stations are nicely equipped with cabinetry, complete with drawers and cupboards to neatly tuck things away, out of sight. And, most drawers and cabinets are packed with outdated useless stuff that make it hard to know what you have, what you don't have, and what you should have.
What if, instead, they had open shelves, with clear visual markings to show what and how many of each item should be there, when and how to reorder - the visual world of Lean 5S.
Sometimes you need to remove your doors and drop your drawers to improve the daily work.
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