A case study for sustaining a standardized healthcare procedure

This paper describes the sustainment plan of a project that standardizes a healthcare procedure and provides training of this procedure to physician trainees. The procedure discussed in this paper is the insertion of central venous internal jugular triple-lumen catheters using ultrasound guidance. This project was the first attempt to standardize a medical procedure that has significant risks and its associated training across six different departments at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). Multiple stakeholders were involved beyond the six departments including representatives from UTSW’s Simulation Center and Quality, UTSW’s Safety and Outcomes Education Department and the University of Texas at Arlington’s (UTA) Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department. At this point in the project, the medical procedure has been standardized and the training process and educational support materials have been developed necessitating a sustainability plan to achieve long-term goals. Many potential challenges exist including continued adherence to the standardized procedure and the associated training curriculum. The sustainability plan provides a support framework that helps ensure the standardized procedure, the training and the associated deliverables are continued well into the future. The paper also presents preliminary results from the application of a sustainability model.