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The knowledge, skills and attitudes demanded of today’s nurses are rapidly evolving, due in large part to the sweeping changes in our healthcare system brought on by the passage of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Preparing graduates for practice in these complex environments challenges faculty at all levels of nursing education, but particularly at the DNP system leadership level as schools simultaneously face faculty shortages nationwide. The resulting increased pressure on faculty workloads has the potential to compromise the curricular enhancements needed to stay on pace with the skill sets required in today’s clinical settings.
The LEAN process, originating from the engineering industry, represents an approach focused upon enhancing customer value, while simultaneously speeding needed improvements. Using LEAN is one way to more rapidly gain faculty input and consensus around needed curricular redesign. In this session, faculty members describe how they used the LEAN process to efficiently and effectively enhance their DNP curriculum. Faculty satisfaction, benefits as well as lessons learned will be explained.
Methods: A successful LEAN Rapid Improvement Event was defined as accomplishing the key goals for the event while achieving high levels of faculty satisfaction. Accomplishment of key goals was determined by faculty consensus at the end of the event. Satisfaction data was anonymously obtained from all involved faculty assessing structure, process and outcomes on a ten point scale and submitting additional written comments as well.
Results: All goals for the event were accomplished. Faculty satisfaction with the structure, process and outcomes of the event ranged from 9-10 on a ten point scale.
Conclusion: LEAN methods can be used to garner rapid curricular changes while achieving high levels of faculty satisfaction with the process. Keeping pace with the demands imposed by our rapidly changing healthcare systems demands that faculty look for efficient and effective ways to keep pace via curricular enhancements.