Efficiency in operating room: how the practitioners' perception generates innovations

The profound changes of the healthcare systems in all western countries led to innovations in hospital facilities, inspired to the search of greater efficiency and rationalization in the use of resources. Nonetheless, in terms of system and single unit operating on the market, the formulation of a univocal definition of the concept of efficiency appears to be complex. An in-depth study of the concept at work facilitate the comprehension of how to design managerial innovations responding at that call of efficient and fluid workflow. The operating room is often theatre of process innovations derived from costs optimization and more functional ways of work inspired by manufacturing literature. In this sense, a study on efficiency carried out according to a qualitative approach can contribute to express the perceptions of the subjects who must implement it, and therefore it can expand the vision of efficiency in its facets. This study focuses on the operating room of the cardio-surgery department of an Italian hospital facility. Through semi-structured interviews addressed to the department’s doctors and staff based and developed according to the phenomenography method, it stands out how the concept is varied and multi-dimensional and how managerial innovations, must take in consideration the multiple meanings perceived and attributed by the actors, as well as the interactions established between the variations of meaning represented in the outcome space.