Creating Solutions for Meeting the Challenges of Maintaining a Healthy Work Practice: Our Experience at a County Hospital

No one could have imagined the impact of COVID-19 on every level of health care delivery, including its frontline workers: the nurses, doctors, and other key team members who directly provide patient care. Health care workers are driven by compassion and moral responsibility to perform their duties with diligence, consistency, and patient centricity. Yet, the uncertain consequences of a potentially life-threatening new disease can introduce feelings of personal insecurity and team disconnection, especially at the onset of a pandemic crisis. It also creates a unique opportunity to test and validate measures that aim to improve decision-making, communication, and collaboration and that provide meaningful recognition, 4 of the essential elements included in the AACN Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments.¹ 

At Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, we adopted an interactive process several years ago that incorporates the concept of Lean thinking, a team-driven method derived from the Toyota Manufacturing...