By Kim Shopper, External Communications
Specialist, North Kansas City Hospital
The Performance Improvement Department located
at North Kansas City Hospital in Missouri used
Statit
piMD™ in a quality assurance demonstration
for children attending Take Your Child to
Work Day on April 24.
Each year North Kansas City Hospital hosts
a Kids' Academy in recognition of Take Your
Child to Work Day. This year, children ages
7 to 14 rotated through eight stations with
no more than 15 children per group. Hospital
departments managed each station and presented
a program related to their role in the hospital.
The Laboratory presented on proper hand washing.
Pharmacy staff asked children to sort "pills"
(candy) into bottles. Cardiac Rehab connected
children to monitors to see their hearts react
to exercise. Nutrition Services helped kids
prepare a healthy snack. The Emergency Department
conducted ambulance tours, and Security staff
talked about keeping everyone safe in a hospital.
The Performance Improvement Department used
Statit piMD in a quality assurance demonstration
using building blocks. Staff members labeled
three computers: Red Machine, Yellow Machine
and Blue Machine. Each computer had a box of
pre-selected samples of LEGOS®. Each sample
was a plastic bag containing LEGOS® the
color designated on the machine's sign and also
some white blocks. There were a total of 20
LEGOS® in each bag. The white blocks were
the "defects". The students counted
the white blocks and entered the number of defects.
The number of white blocks in each bag ranged
from 0 to 6.
Each computer contained a copy of a database
created using Microsoft® Access. When students
began at the computer they first entered their
name, age and received a worker ID. They opened
a different form and entered their worker ID,
the date, time and the number of white blocks
in the sample. Then, they clicked on a button
that ran a macro opening Statit piMD™ using
ExecNowDirectLive to open an indicator for LEGOS®
Quality Control in scorecard mode. They were
able to see a graph of the percent of defects
produced by their machine. Next, they opened
another form and reset the color mix for the
machine based on the percent of defects. For
this activity, the samples were pre-selected
so changes in the color mix setting didn't actually
change the next sample.
An indicator was set up in Statit piMD for
each machine with a query in the database as
the data source. A user was created, called
LEGOS® Quality Control, with the password
"quality". A view was constructed
that displayed just the scorecard for the three
machines. The students could see the changes
in their samples as well as the changes in the
other machines.
Overall students enjoyed this exercise. Our
goal was to allow the students a chance to use
computers in a way that their parents might
use them at work and to see how monitoring a
process can elicit change.
