I have written about the sequence of queues in a blood donor session earlier. Yesterday my appointment was later in the session and the system had reached a steady state; so I could observe where the bottlenecks were in the system. I had to wait a long time for the initial medical assessment, but I think that this was because the person in charge was operating a sort of feedback so that he didn't have too many people waiting at the next queue -- or too few either. What surprised me was that there was a long delay once I was on the couch; but I realised that it was a combination of rare events which meant that the nurses were busy elsewhere.
I wonder whether anyone in the blood donor service in the U.K. -- or elsewhere -- monitors where there are bottlenecks in sequences of queues. Not the long delays between doctors and hospitals, but the process within one system?
1 comment:
Hurry up and wait is the modus operandi for blood drives in the U.S. as well. I'm curious to what extent it is due to specific expertise not replicated across all staff, and to what extent it is a lack of OR (or general management) awareness among the medical professionals drawing the blood.
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