Addressing blood tube wastage in NHS hospitals.

The NHS Imperial Trust reported unexpected wastage of blood tubes in two out of five of their hospitals in London. In a collaboration with the RCA Service Design Graduate Program, we conducted a day-long design sprint to gain a better understanding of the problem, and to help the NHS empathize with the hospital staff involved in the issue.

I co-lead a team of 4 researchers, 2 nurses, and 2 NHS executives to conduct qualitative research, and propose divergent solutions regarding labeling, new product capability, and hospital sharing economies. Information in this project has been anonymized or obscured due to confidentiality.

Skills

Ethnography studies, contextual inquiry, interviews, journey mapping, workshop facilitation

Human-centered research

We wanted to leverage our design thinking skills to guide the NHS executives to build empathy for the key players involved in hospital logistics, so we visited both of the sites with reported wastage and conducted in-depth interviews with three main stakeholder groups: delivery specialists (transport tubes), hospital managers (manage equipment), and nurses (use tubes).

* Methodology: field visits, interviews, observational studies

Demographics: male, age 18-35, high school education
Psychographics: athletic, talkative, opinionated
Demographics: female, age 35-50, college education
Psychographics: informative, pragmatic, stern, accountable
Demographics: female, age 25-35, college education
Psychographics: open-minded, empathetic, kind, stressed

key insight

The blood tubes would expire before being used, because of inconsistent organization.

None of the stakeholders were willing to take accountability for the lack of organization, and had never communicated with each other about a standardized approach to handling the issue.

Connecting the dots

After conducting interviews and observational studies, the team co-created a journey map to help visualize the problem, and specifically assess the emotional and functional needs of each stakeholder at different touchpoints in the blood tube logistics. This was especially important during the ideation phase, because once we got the NHS employees to empathize with each stakeholder, there was a higher chance of gaining buy-in for the proposals. It also generated a more involved experience between all of the team members.

SYNTHESIS | BLOOD TUBE JOURNEY & STAKEHOLDER MAP

Translating the why

Aligning with the NHS

Getting on the same page after an intense day of research can be tricky. Moreover, as a business leader, it can be hard to hear what a user is saying and translate it into something actionable. The NHS employees’ initial response after the interviews was that the employees were insufficient at doing their job — however, we helped them come to the conclusion that each employee is actually doing a lot already with their day-to-day responsibilities, and in fact weren’t being properly enabled by the NHS infrastructure.

Narrowing in on the problem

Since the nurses were the main users of the blood tubes, they were experiencing the most criticism for the wasted product.

So we asked ourselves — how might we enable efficiency and accountability between the stakeholders involved in the blood tube logistics?

Proposals

After several rounds of ideation, we landed on three main directions that the NHS could take back to their internal team. As consultants, we made sure that we explicitly identified the benefits and drawbacks of each proposal.

Reflection

IF WE HAD MORE TIME, we would...

Conduct user research with more people (diary studies, surveys, etc.)
Bring more stakeholders into co-creating solutions
Create a cost analysis with business leaders for each proposed solution
Create a roadmap to deliver solutions

Key Takeaways

Aligning on problems and solutions between UX researchers and business leaders takes... a little perserverance :-)
Ethnographic research and interviews illustrate emotional motivations of each stakeholder group more than quantitative data