During last Friday’s episode of QDL, we examined the potential of quality thinking to improve outcomes for people’s health, manufacturing, and workplace efficiency. Let’s take a look:

“World Toilet Day”

ISO truly has a standard (or at least a standard in development) for everything. World Toilet Day was on Nov. 19, which offers us the opportunity to discuss ISO’s project committee 305. The committee’s goal is to create a standard to tackle a major health concern: the billions of people worldwide who don’t have access to safe and effective sanitation systems.

“How Burnout Is Plaguing Doctors and Harming Patients”

We stayed in the realm of healthcare for this story, written by neurologist Jay Desai. Here, Dr. Desai talks about the implications when upwards of 60 percent of healthcare professionals suffer from burnout. On a brighter note, he offers some solutions that have worked in his career to keep him happy and engaged.

Interview: Jaseem Mahmmdla

Mahmmdla is a senior product and solution manager at Sparta Systems, and the presenter for a Nov. 5, 2017, webinar that Quality Digest and Sparta presented, titled, “Four Metrics Quality Teams Use to Improve Manufacturing.” 

“Too Much Togetherness?”

It turns out that there are some significant downsides to workplace collaboration. This article from the Knowledge@Wharton site considers overloaded colleagues, attention-seeking office superheroes, and even the role of unconscious gender roles in why collaboration may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Off-Script: Crystal ball, 2018 version

In our most spontaneous segment of the show, I asked Dirk to make some predictions for the coming year. His thoughts (and mine) might surprise you.

Catch us again for another episode of Quality Digest Live this coming Fri., Dec. 8, 2017. You can watch us either on our home page or our dedicated player page. See you there!