We hope you’re all getting ready for a wonderful Thanksgiving full of (union made) food, fun, and family. The SHARE organizing staff is grateful for countless things that SHARE members do every day to take care of people who come to our hospital for help. There are always SHARE members doing critical work, around the clock, every day, including holidays. We’re grateful for that, and continually grateful to be able to participate in sustaining and improving that important work.

And, this is too good not to share: in case you missed the scene outside of the ACC last week, check out this colorful view from the UBT huddle in the Orthopedics Clinic!

CT UBTs: Improvements All Around!

We apologize that, in our previous mailing, we made a “department identification error,” and mixed up two important projects that SHARE members have successfully implemented in the CT departments at UMass Memorial. Thank you to those SHARE members who highlighted the mistake!

At the recent visit from Catalysis leaders, the University CT department presented about their IV Room project, as described below, which has resulted in a 20% reduction in wait times for patients. You may recognize the project as the winner of UMass Memorial’s “2023 Innovators of the Year.”

UBT Co-Leads Julie Parker and Matt Geary (not pictured, Co-Lead Micah Levine.)

This poster from the UBT Fair describes their project and what it’s meant for patients and caregivers in the University CT department

In the previous post, we described a great success story from a different Unit Based Team, in which union members identified an opportunity to reduce the amount of barium that patients need to drink before imaging. That project was actually initiated by the Memorial campus CT department UBT, pictured below. They recently presented that project to the Labor Management Partnership Council, and at a UBT Peer Learning event. As you might guess from their presentation slide, they had a good time doing it . . .

Patients must drink the barium sulfate before a CT procedure in order for the Technologists to obtain images, but it tastes unpleasant and is uncomfortable for patients to ingest. SHARE Technologists came to recognize that improvements in imaging technology might reduce the amount of contrast solution needed, so they set up a project that tested the image quality when patients drank only one dose, rather than two. They discovered that cutting the dose in half still yields excellent results, and allows SHARE members to save the hospital over $35,000 annually system-wide. More importantly, the new process relieves patients that they don’t have to drink so much of it, and makes it easier and more efficient for SHARE members to help patients through their scans.