For Immediate Release

Mercy Nurses De-clutter and Make Time

Oklahoma City—Ever wonder what a car maker and a nurse have in common? Ask a Mercy nurse. By using some tools designed by Toyota, Mercy nurses have found a way to retool their work space, making way for more room and greater efficiency which translates into more time by the bedside with patients.

“It’s out-of-the-box thinking,” said Pam Spanbauer, Mercy’s director of nursing. “We’ve taken a Toyota concept and applied it to healthcare and it has worked. As nurses, we tend to hoard and hide, stashing away items for a rainy day. We get so bogged down with clutter that we negatively impact our work flow. By de-cluttering and creating an environment that works for us, we ultimately provide better care for our patients.”

As a pilot project that has had great success, there’s now a waiting list to begin de-cluttering projects throughout the hospital. Jane Lewis, Mercy’s Lean Six Sigma black belt, said here are just a few of the highpoints:

• By clearing out clutter—items that no longer were of use—one nursing unit removed three dumpsters of “stuff.”
• By freeing up space, nurses reconfigured how to store frequently used items in convenient places, providing easy access.
• There’s now a home for everything which takes the guesswork out of finding items when needed.
• By relocating items such as pads and blankets in high-traffic areas, each nursing unit is saving an average of 1.2 miles in daily foot travel (which equates to 159 labor hours annually).
• By placing items in well-thought-out locations, nurses benefit by better body mechanics—less straining, twisting and lifting.

“We took business tools and modified them for healthcare and in the process we empowered nurses to rethink their environments,” said Lewis. “Nurses spend anywhere from eight to 12 or more hours a day at the hospital. Besides making the space more efficient, we also found that nurses felt less overwhelmed and less stressed with a more organized work area.”

Press release dated: November 11, 2008

Mercy Health Center, the first Magnet hospital in Oklahoma and among only 3 percent of hospitals in the nation to be awarded Magnet status, is a member of Mercy Health System of Oklahoma and the Sisters of Mercy Health System. Magnet-designated facilities: report higher patient satisfaction rates, deliver better patient outcomes, provide more nursing care at the bedside of patients and consistently outperform non-magnet organizations.