Use of Lean techniques in health care in Spain to improve involvement and satisfaction of workers

The purpose of this study was to improve the organization of work, reduce physical effort, and obtain greater satisfaction of workers in the Pre-analytical Area of the Clinical Biochemistry Service at the Miguel Servet University Hospital of Zaragoza, in Spain, by applying Lean techniques. Such techniques were applied in two steps to obtain a final situation where the reduction of the space occupied, the required physical effort, and the work time is clear. The satisfaction of the workers was analyzed during the whole process by means of surveys, concluding that the sum of all the improvements managed to increase the satisfaction of the professionals. One key aspect to get these results was to use always the information and opinions of the staff making them feel the protagonists of the process. For that, it was essential the role of the agent of change that fundamentally sought the involvement of professionals in the improvement processes. Another key point was the careful application of Lean techniques always little by little, by applying small changes that became habits and achieved permanent results. In conclusion, in this work, a methodology to improve involvement and satisfaction of workers in health care has been presented and validated.