POTSDAM -- A group of 11 engineering and management students from Clarkson University recently provided a healthy dose of procedural savvy to Canton-Potsdam Hospital while honing their own real-world skills.

Following a tradition started three years ago, assistant professor of engineering and management Cecilia Martinez developed five projects where students could improve various processes at the hospital.

Martinez's area of expertise is Lean Six Sigma, which relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by removing different types of inefficiencies and waste through an in-depth root-cause and statistical analysis.

“My role was to guide them in their problem-solving journey at CPH,” Martinez said. “I attended some of the project meetings with CPH, removed some roadblocks, and provided oversight to make sure students were not only on the right track but were making the expected progress to complete the project on time.”

The 11 students divided into groups to handle five improvement projects.

They determined ways to reduce food waste; streamlined the process of transporting meal trays to patients; redesigned the scheduling process for total joint replacements, reducing the average number of business days required in the preoperative schedule from 37 days to 24 days; trimmed the time to access safe patient handling equipment from about 7 minutes to 3 minutes; and improved the way digital patient information is entered, cutting the average waiting time for orthopedics patients in the St. Lawrence Health System orthopedics registration area from 16.5 minutes to 10.5 minutes.