A Librarian's Experience with Six Sigma® Tools

ABSTRACT

Hospitals are initiating quality improvement projects in their hospitals. Librarians can utilize many of these tools to improve the quality of their department(s) and to promote projects from the library. This article reviews the use of some Six Sigma® quality improvement process tools to enhance the quality of the library.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospital
• quality improvement
• process improvement
• Six Sigma®
• librarians
• libraries

The author acknowledges her Six Sigma Green Belt training teammates Shannon Johnson, RN, Clinical Quality Improvement Analyst, Michael Wade, OTR, CHT, Director of Physical Medicine, and Miranda Woosley, Project Manager at Deaconess Health System for their work on the 2004–2005 Door-To-Inflation Project. The author would also like to acknowledge Robert Wood, Reference Librarian at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center for his editorial assistance.

Comments and suggestions should be sent to the Column Editors, Carol Galganski (E-mail: [email protected]) and Dixie A. Jones (E-mail: [email protected]).

Notes

3. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Specifications manual for national hospital quality measures, Version 1.0. 2004 September AMI-8 and AMI-8a.