Ideas That Work: Small Groups Yield Big Results

Practical pearls from your colleagues

If you want staff to be more engaged and active in quality improvement and other care-related initiatives, think small. That’s the advice Cindy Bess, RN, BSN, CLNC, CNOR, director of First Hill Surgery Center in Seattle, offers surgical leaders based on her own eye-opening success with the use of small groups. Facing consistently low Gallup staff engagement scores at her former ASC, Ms. Bess sought to fix the problem by breaking frontline staff into small groups and having them drive improvement projects in every component of its business, including quality improvement, patient satisfaction, staff satisfaction, stewardship (cost savings), process improvement, removing waste and efficiency. The Small Group project required all staff to join a group, which needed to be a minimum of two members. The groups could be made up of a single classification (all RNs, MDs, SPD techs, etc.) or an interdepartmental mix, but every member of the group needed to bring a common interest or topic (i.e., standardized case cart picking) to the project. Each of the groups reported on their progress quarterly.

In the first year following the Small Group project, Gallup scores rose significantly (4.10, up from 3.70). Perhaps more important is the impact the initiative has on group members. “Staff satisfaction improves greatly with this simple frontline project,” says Ms. Bess. OSM