Lean and compassionate care

Two hot topics in Dutch healthcare are 'lean thinking' and 'compassionate care' (menslievende zorg). We agree that they are related, but we have little understanding how. Therefore some thoughts about this from the perspective of lean thinking, based on: value, respect, time pressure and system thinking.

Value
Conceptually lean and compassion come together in the concept of value. Lean thinking means that every activity and process is viewed from the question: what value does it add? Compassionate care is a core value of our existence as a hospital and therefore a natural question to ask when improving processes: is this process compassionate? If not, why not?

If an acceleration of a process or standardization or another change is at the expense of compassionate care it is basically not an improvement.
 
Respect
One of the two core values of Toyota is: respect (besides Kaizen). Respect for customers, employees, supply chain partners and society. This translates, among others, that everyone is well equipped for their tasks and that everyone is challenged to perform a little better tomorrow. Respect is a  core value from lean thinking that relates well to compassionate care.

Time pressure and system thinking
Why is care (sometimes / often?) given less compassionate than we would like?  The academic hospital UMC Utrecht performed a study that is published in Journal for Nurses (Tijdschrift voor Verpleegkundigen), April 2009, 4. A quote from p.45:

"Nurses experienced obstructing factors to practice compassionate care. Time pressure was the main factor. Interviewees indicate that it's no excuse, but the amount of duties and hectic of the situation and basic care gets priority over the relationship with the patient."

Lean thinking focuses on reducing non-value adding activities, which can reduce the workload. One of the core principles is: hijunka. It aims to evenly distribute the workload throughout the day and the week. Health professionals often speak of running and standing still as their day rythm. It is conceivable that it is particularly difficult to provide compassionate care during peek levels of workload. Evenly distributing the workload with fewer disruptions can lead to more attention to patients

Compassionate care addresses directly the intrinsic motivation of individual care providers. Lean thinking can add: why does the system lead to inadequate compassionate care for our patients?