1110 Thoracic Theatres: Audit of Theatre Efficiency

Aim Turnover time is the cumulative time of processes between procedure finish (final dressing applied) and next procedure start (knife to skin). This audit aims to establish current turnover times and identify individual process times within patient turnover to improve theatre efficiency. Method This audit spanned between 22/5/2023-22/6/2023. Patient turnovers (N=41) from all elective thoracic procedures (N=61), across 19 operating days were examined. Operating days (N=2) with single cases were excluded from analysis. A process map was used to visualise the processes involved in patient turnover. Individual process times were extracted from Bluspier and data analysis performed using Microsoft Excel. All descriptive statistics are reported as mean±standard deviation with 95% confidence intervals. Results Mean procedure and turnover time were 93±16 and 94±14 minutes respectively. The audit revealed 2 main processes contributing to current turnover times, handover from theatre to recovery bay (23±8 minutes) and subsequent patient sign-in and transfer to anaesthetic room (36±6 minutes). Both processes make up 54±13 minutes of current turnover times. Recovery bay availability was influenced by ward/ ITU availability, with patients ready for discharge spent an extra 48±13 minutes in recovery pending ward transfer. This causes time blocks for the anaesthetic team who are unable to complete handover to recovery resulting in delays for subsequent patient sign-in. Conclusions Ideal solutions to improve turnover times would involve parallel processing with concurrent handover and patient sign-in and workforce expansion to improve ward availability. However, with limited resources, a cost-neutral solution would be difficult to achieve.