Last week I spent the day at Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust learning about portering services.
It’s amazing how much time is spent moving things and people around hospitals: “..for every patient that comes in to A+E, we move them on average 4 times throughout the hospital” Paul, a porter at Barnsley stated.
Portering is something you don’t really notice and take for granted, but porters are another cog hidden behind many of the daily mechanics of the NHS. Many portering services are not designed, many have grown organically and have been stuck on to new departments or services without any design or logistical consideration.
The research we are supporting is looking at how other companies outside the NHS move things and people around. We are in the search of ideas to improve and innovate current portering services across the NHS.
Which services or companies do you think the NHS portering services could learn from?
Mar 6th, Ivo said:
Airports? They seem to be fairly good at moving all those bags around. I think airports are generally simpler than hospitals though.
Mar 7th, Paul Thurston said:
When I used to work in Marks and Spencer as an operations assistant we would be responsible for moving the new deliveries from the lorries onto the shop floor.
The process that we used is pretty much the same in every store and works really smoothly. It’s quite amazing to think that two people could unload a number of articulated lorries and stock the storerooms in such a small amount of time.
We used to do this in 3 hours so that we were ready for opening.
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Have you ever seen a supermarket depot too, they are pretty amazing examples of moving a LOT of stuff around.