Page 53 of Dr. Off Limits

“Yeah.” She glanced at Sutton. “Patients in each ward would be grouped according to the likelihood of them leaving that day. Is that right?”

Sutton nodded. “I’ve noticed there are usually patients in each ward that just need the doctor to sign a prescription or check bloods that have come back overnight, but usually everyone’s aware they’re probably going to go home.”

“Right,” I said, wanting her to go on.

“The idea is that two or three of those people are dealt with at the beginning of rounds so they can be discharged as soon as possible.”

People started to groan and shout out reasons why that wouldn’t work, but there was something in this idea.

“Shhh,” I snapped. “I said this is the time when we’re not talking about what won’t work. We’re just discussing ideas.”

I looked back at Sutton and she shrugged.

“We need an express lane with just two or three patients in it each day. That would free up beds for morning admissions. Then it would be business as usual for the rest of rounds. You could even have nurses prioritize patients in the express lane, since they’ll have made overnight observations.”

Bloody hell, she was smart. She was really on to something with her idea. I wanted to flesh things out, ask her more questions, but I had to be patient. The doctors really had to own this.

“Thanks for that,” I said. “Veronica? Anything else?”

She shook her head.

“Now we’ve heard everyone’s ideas, the next stage is for us all to focus on one problem and come up with the most viable solution. Let’s vote with a show of hands.”

The vote for freeing up beds and readmissions was even, with only two votes going to the issue with blood results. I could declare that I had a casting vote, but I didn’t want to demotivate people. I wanted them all to have ownership of this.

“Okay, so it’s between freeing up beds and readmissions. We’re going to revote between the two.”

Lucky for me, they voted on freeing up beds. Sutton had a really great idea that might actually work.

“Each group needs to discuss the various ideas they and the other teams suggested. Think about how it would really work in practice.” Sutton’s idea had the added advantage that it could be trialed in peds, and I was pretty sure Gerry would agree.

If we could successfully implement this idea, it could really improve efficiency on the wards and show that the idea of the offsite had really borne fruit.

And it might all be down to Sutton.

---