BACKGROUND
Lions Gift of Sight is a full-service eye bank that obtains, medically evaluates, and distributes donor eyes for cornea transplants, research, and education. Providing more than 1,000 corneas for transplant and 1,000 eyes for research every year, the eye bank helps ensure that as many people as possible receive the gift of sight. Due to the urgency of donations, this team is required to be on call 24/7. Covering gaps in the schedule was falling on the supervisor and was unsustainable.
CASE STUDY:
Lions Gift of Sight
INDUSTRY: Healthcare
EMPLOYEES: 8 employees
HEADQUARTERS: Minneapolis, in partnership
with The University of Minnesota
THE CHALLENGE
The work done by the team at Lions Gift of Sight is inspiring and rewarding, but the day-to-day effort can be very stressful due to the delicate nature of consent between donors, their families, and donation recipients. The current schedule had been in place for several years. Backshifts were filled by coordinators who preferred to work weekends and night shifts. Based on retirements, the regular backshift coverage went away, and covering nights and weekends became a major issue for the workforce, especially the supervisor in charge who needed to fill all the gaps in coverage.
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THE RESULTS
Coleman Consulting Group has helped the Lions Gift of Sight find solutions that best fit their preferences. Our consulting team continues to check progress to ensure they have the coverage they need on the backshifts. We are now assisting the Lions Gift of Sight team to implement scheduling software, which will further help them with flexibility and predictability.
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THE SOLUTION
Regardless of shift, all coordinators reported that the mental demand and stress of their work was higher than average. Due to this mental fatigue, limiting the number of days worked in a row was important in preventing burnout. The solution implemented was a modified 3-3 pattern for the night shift coordinators. Day shift coordinators reported positive feedback in our anonymous survey, and chose to rotate days off more frequently.