Achieve Sustainable Hospital Excellence Through 5-S in an Emergency Department in Hong Kong

Abstract 5-S is the first step towards TQM. Over the last century, the Japanese have formalised the technique and named it as 5-S Practice. Since 1993, Sam Ho has improved and defined its terms in English/Chinese and developed the world's first 5-S Audit Checklist. In the article, an emergency department of a Hong Kong hospital was examined against 5-S 50-point Checklist for the improvement of their quality assurance systems towards its accreditation process with Australian standards. The findings evidently reveal that the impact of 5-S on hospital quality assurance in the unit are positive. Riding on the above scenario, the research aim is to identify whether the 5-S practice is a suitable and effective tool for healthcare quality assurance in an emergency setting which is led towards its accreditation process set by other mechanisms.