TOOLS
Chief’s Role in Implementing UBTs
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
UBT chief physicians
Best used:
Use this tool when a new chief joins a UBT, to explain the role and expectations.
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Does your team want to improve service? Or clinical quality? If you don't know where to start, check out the team-tested practices on the LMP website. This short video shows you how.
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Need to find a checklist, template or puzzle? Don't know where to start? Check out this short video to find the tools you need on the LMP website with just a few clicks.
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
UBT chief physicians
Best used:
Use this tool when a new chief joins a UBT, to explain the role and expectations.
Format:
PDF (color and black and white)
Size:
8.5 x 11
Intended Audience:
Frontline employees, managers and physicians
Best used:
This poster features advice from a physician leader about overcoming resistance to change. Place on bulletin boards in break rooms and other staff areas.
Format:
PDF (color and black and white)
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
Frontline employees, managers and physicians
Best used:
Post this advice from a UBT labor co-lead, about overcoming resistance to change, on bulletin boards, in break rooms and other staff areas.
Format:
PDF (color and black and white)
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
Frontline employees, managers and physicians
Best used:
Post this around the workplace to inspire your staff to take courage and become great leaders.
Format:
PDF (color or black and white)
Size:
4.5" x 6"
Intended audience:
Anyone with a sense of humor
Best used:
Lighthearted look at how change takes hold shows how you and your colleagues can make it happen.
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
Meeting planners, team leaders and support staff
Best used:
Inspire your team to hold better, healthier meetings with these tips on activities, snacks and green products.
Format:
PDF (color or black and white)
Size:
6.5" x 6"
Intended audience:
Anyone with a sense of humor
Best used:
Share with colleagues on bulletin boards, in huddles and in your cubicle this lighthearted look at how the whole KP world revolves around our members and patients.
Looking for ways to make the Sand Canyon Surgicenter in Irvine more efficient, Albert Olmeda wound up learning a lot about blue wrap—like the fact that it makes up nearly 20 percent of the waste generated by hospital surgical services.
The lead Central Services technician and SEIU UHW member also learned that this heavily used hospital product, an industrial strength plastic used to maintain the sterility of medical and surgical instruments until opened, is not biodegradable and persists in the environment.
But recycled blue wrap can be sold as raw material for use in the production of other plastic products. Today, the surgicenter’s unit-based team has gone green with a blue wrap recycling project that is not only saving money and protecting the environment, but also aiding the community.
“The biggest problem with the blue wrap is when we throw it in the landfill, it’s there forever,” says Olmeda. “That’s a big concern especially considering how much blue wrap we use.”
About 600 pounds of blue wrap is collected every week from the center’s six operating rooms. It is picked up free of charge and sorted by Goodwill of Orange County, which sells it to a Houston recycling services company. The company reprocesses the plastic into beads that are used in various products, including railroad ties, pallets and artificial siding for decks, docks and houses.
The surgicenter has been recycling its blue wrap and plastic bottles since September 2009, reducing the facility’s solid waste disposal fee by 10 percent annually. The savings amount to a modest $5,880—but there’s a greater payoff. Proceeds from the sale of blue wrap and other recyclable products enable Goodwill to provide education and training programs for developmentally and physically disabled adults, including a state-of-the-art fitness center.
Peter Bares, business development manager for Goodwill of Orange County, says the relationship with Kaiser Permanente has gone beyond expectations. “It is kind of the perfect storm because of the nature of what we do and why we do it and the materials that the hospital generates,” he says.
As the frontline staff person responsible for the surgery center’s blue wrap disposal, Olmeda—and his fellow UBT members—championed the recycling cause, educating the staff at weekly in-services and UBT huddles. The team got the rest of the department on board by integrating the blue wrap recycling process without creating additional tasks.
“We figured if we changed workflows, staff wouldn’t want to do it.” says UBT co-lead Nicole Etchegoyen, a surgery scheduler and SEIU UHW steward. “But if we asked them, ‘How would this work best for you?’ then everyone would get involved, and they did.”
The team members designated a single container for blue wrap in each operating room. They also placed a larger bin for collecting multiple bags of discarded blue wrap near the soiled utility room, where the trash is taken on its way out of the surgery center.
“It’s not a big deal,” EVS worker and SEIU UHW member George Sollars said, hoisting bags. “We just carry it over here on our way out this door. It’s one of the easiest jobs. And it’s for a really good cause.”
The hardest part was making make sure that other trash didn’t make it into the blue wrap recycling containers accidentally. Labeling the containers with signs reading ‘Recycling Blue Wrap Only’ helped, as did regular reminders by UBT members.
Now, everyone in the operating rooms—from doctors, nurses and surgical techs to nursing assistants and EVS workers—makes sure that the blue wrap containers aren’t contaminated with other trash, Etchegoyen says.
Olmeda does periodic spot checks. “Everybody who plays a role in the operating room has to look out to make sure no trash is going inside the containers,” he says. “It’s a team-building thing.”
“If it wasn’t for the UBT, this wouldn’t be happening,” said Ramin Zolfagar, MD, department head and UBT member. “We are helping the environment by ‘going blue,’ so to speak, and the end result is gym equipment for the disabled—which makes it all the more worthwhile.”
After learning about the project at a recent Orange County UBT fair, other departments are thinking about emulating it.
Visit the Goodwill of Orange County website to find out more about their work.
Format:
PDF (color and black and white)
Size:
39 pages, 11" x 8.5" (landscape)
Intended audience:
Anyone designing and creating Labor Management Partnership print or web materials.
Best used:
The LMP Brand Guidelines provide guidance on the use of the LMP logo and accompanying visual elements such as typography, layout and color.