Lean Management of Surgical Instruments in Multidisciplinary Collaboration: Practice Research With Multidimensional Evaluation of Cost and Quality

OBJECTIVE: To establish a multidisciplinary collaborative Lean Management framework for surgical instruments and to evaluate its practical effectiveness in the dual dimensions of cost control and quality improvement. METHODS: A multidisciplinary Lean Management team was established. Targeting the current state of surgical instrument management in a tertiary-grade A cancer hospital in Tianjin, Lean strategies were implemented, including standardised categorised management, optimisation and reorganisation of instrument sets, establishment of shared instrument pools, and IT-enabled traceability. A historical control study was conducted to compare core indicators before and after the optimisation (with the Lean Management implementation period from January to June 2023), including instrument configuration costs, processing costs, labour time consumption, instrument preparation readiness rate and healthcare staff satisfaction. RESULTS: Following the implementation of Lean Management, the variety of surgical instrument sets was streamlined by 32.7%, and the average number of instruments per set was reduced by 21.3%, achieving cumulative savings in total instrument configuration costs of 4.9682 million CNY. The time spent by scrub nurses on instrument counting and the time spent by CSSD personnel on processing and assembly decreased across different labour domains, with reductions of 27.2%, 12.8% and 14.5% observed for scrub nurses, CSSD processing time and CSSD assembly time, respectively, with all differences being statistically significant (p < 0.001). The surgical instrument preparation readiness rate improved from 86.2% before optimisation to 98.7%. Satisfaction scores among surgeons, operating room nurses and CSSD personnel increased from 11.48 ± 1.95, 11.66 ± 1.76 and 9.46 ± 1.82 points to 13.67 ± 2.66, 14.14 ± 2.07 and 15.07 ± 2.63 points, respectively, with all differences being statistically significant (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The multidisciplinary collaborative Lean Management model enables precise allocation of surgical instrument resources, effectively reduces operational costs and significantly enhances nursing work efficiency and instrument management quality. This approach aligns with the requirements for high-quality development in modern operating rooms.