Your work environment will either enhance or distract from your battle for efficiency. In today’s article I will cover my No. 5, the 5 S system, in my list of the Top 5 Lean Six Sigma tools for clinical trial sites.
In Clinical Trials, the focus is on the research participants and ensuring protocol compliance, which is where it should be! But at times, the physical and electronic environment that clinical trial teams are working in gets neglected. Hopefully, the research exam rooms, diagnostics areas and waiting rooms are spotless and organized when patients/research participants walk in. However, don’t forget to pay attention to operational and administrative offices! A lot of important work happens away from the patient-facing areas. Clinical trial managers and leaders can help their staff work in an efficient and motivating environment. In the Lean Six Sigma world, the 5 S system makes sure work environments are clean, organized and conducive to doing the best work!
When I first started out in clinical trials, we were operating out of a converted closet space. We had lab kits, file boxes and other random supplies stashed wherever they would fit. We walked carefully around the four cubes (for 8 people) because if you bumped them too hard, random items might fall on your head! As a rapidly growing department we moved to a much larger space within two years. The new space was amazing, but it was several weeks before we were organized and efficient. A big culprit was the lab kits for over 50+ different studies. Nothing was more frustrating than going through several cabinets or cubes to find the right lab kit for your upcoming study visit! Even more frustrating was finding the elusive kit and then realizing some of the blood collection tubes were expired. New to-do item: add a trip to the lab before the study visit to beg replacement tubes. In the busy world of a study coordinator this was not on the list of things you wanted to do! The 5 S system is a great solution for these types of challenges!
In the 5 Step system, you will Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. Let’s go through each of the 5 steps and look at how these can help a clinical trials team reduce chaos and increase efficiency at a research site!
Step 1: Sort
Go through everything in your office space and electronic files and make a decision. Just like your basic organization system, there are three categories that everything should be placed in - keep, toss or move! In this step, you will not organize the keep and move items. These items will be organized in the following step.
It may be easiest to start with physical items such as lab kits, office supplies and paper files. Go ahead and get rid of the unneeded items during this step. Before tossing out office or medical supplies, consider if they can be recycled and used elsewhere in your own organization. If not, you may be able to donate to organizations that will take medical supplies such as Project C.U.R.E and Matter® or schools who will often take office items. You can clean up your space and feel good about these unwanted supplies helping others!
Don’t forget to look at the electronic environment! Disorganized electronic filing systems are often one of the biggest time wasters as we navigate through multiple folders to find that elusive file! In a recent survey of office workers over 50% of office workers identified looking for files/documents in their top list of productivity issues [1]! It is also a big demotivator. Have you ever experienced the frustration of hunting for documents when you expected a task to be quick and easy? And don’t forget about the desktop! Any original files on computer desktops need to go in the “move” category!
Step 2: Straighten
Now that there are two “piles” left (keep or move) it’s time to set everything in order. Make sure all study kits, participant study records and electronic study files are organized by study. Put related items/files together and make it easy to use things efficiently. For example, with our lab kit issue, we got two large cabinets and labeled each shelf for specific study kits. Expired supplies or supplies for closed studies moved to an empty cube until we could donate/dispose of them (Tip: If you do this, make sure these items do not stay here forever! We had a lot of cleaning to do when we expanded our team and needed those cubes!)
Make sure electronic files are easy to find and that you are not clicking several times to get to a study folder. After about 3 clicks, we all start to get frustrated getting to electronic files. Desktop shortcuts that are specific to each coordinator will help tame complex file structures. Electronic files multiply over time so think about long-term file structure and the best way to archive closed studies.
Step 3: Shine
Literally, clean it up! Dust, wipe, wash… This makes a difference in our motivation and sense of well-being. Keeping administrative working areas clean also prevents viruses, bacteria etc. from contaminating the patient-facing areas and helps keep colleagues healthy. I’m sure most offices now have some sort of disinfectant wipe handy throughout your spaces – make sure you keep plenty of these in stock!
Don’t forget to “clean” the electronic files also. This is a good time to double-check that files are where they are supposed to be and that closed study files have been archived appropriately.
Step 4: Standardize
The lack of standardization at clinical trials sites is one of the top challenges for this industry! Organizing and cleaning yields immediate results but if you don’t complete the final two steps in the 5 S system there will be wasted time and rework later!
The office and electronic environment are now organized and clean. Moving forward, make sure everyone knows the standard for maintaining supplies, physical files, work areas and electronic files. For example, once we got lab kits organized at our site, we set up a system to make sure they stayed organized. Everyone knew that there was a protocol to follow when you received new lab kits. You got a yellow highlighter out and marked the study name and the expiration date BEFORE they went in the cabinets on their specified shelf. No one wants an unplanned scavenger hunt at work! We also used our label maker, affectionately dubbed “printy,” generously throughout the office!
Step 5: Sustain
Along with having standardized organization systems, it is also important to have a regular maintenance schedule to go through the 5 S process. The reality of life is that everyone gets busy and occasionally (or not so occasionally!) puts things in the wrong place. Having a plan to keep things as organized as possible AND a regularly scheduled time to go through the 5 S process will help keep the office manageable.
Hint: Sustaining the 5 S system is a great activity for training days or team meeting days when everyone is there. Cleaning and organizing is always more fun as a team!
As researchers and healthcare staff, we are well aware of the 2nd law of thermodynamics - all things move towards disorder if left alone. While everyone is busy, taking time to keep the environment (physical or digital) organized and clean will help teams function more efficiently and will reduce some of the stress that research staff is feeling. Clinical trials are getting more complex! While we cannot control this aspect of the work, we can control our work environment.
Comment below on what elements of the 5 S system have been implemented at your research office. How has it helped your team function more efficiently?
Follow me as I cover No. 4 on my Top 5 Lean Six Sigma tools for clinical trials - the effective checklist!
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