Table 2 Case study: process improvement in response to pressures

“But I think the biggest problem is sterile services, is how they process the instruments. Sometimes, there was few times that we as a scrub team, we have to arrange a staff to go and help them to process instruments just not to cancel any cases or procedures or prioritised, especially the cancer patients. So I think that happened because of their lack of skill mix as well and at the same time sicknesses on the day…

So we've arranged orthopaedic skilled staff to help them out, for example, like in the morning, they can go and process some of the basic instruments, and then in the afternoon, they could come back to theatres to help out as well. So at least just to process the basic stuff for us to carry on…

So we found out that it was really helpful on their part, because they could see, for example, not to compare their staff and our staff like, for example, their orthopaedic staff could manage to pack or process ten instruments within an hour. For example, and CSSD [Central Sterile Services Department] staff, they could only process two in one hour. Yes, so that makes a big difference on their part. Yes, I think we discussed that with the managers and the team as well.” [Lead Theatre Practitioner]