Patient flow workflow
Do now
Diagram the patient flow through an emergency room and locate bottlenecks.
- Hand in
- Patient-flow workflow diagram annotated with queue points, one identified bottleneck, and a written justification of why it is the highest-impact constraint.
- Where
- Turn this in at the drop folder with your district Microsoft sign-in, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count as submitted. Doing the activity in myPLTW does not.
You get two school days for every day you were absent, so this deadline moves with you.
A patient enters an ER at 7:00 and is not seen by a doctor until 8:45. Where in that hour and forty-five minutes did the waiting actually pile up, and why is that one step, not the whole system, the thing to fix?
Diagram the patient flow through an emergency room and locate bottlenecks.
- • You can diagram patient flow from arrival to discharge.
- • You can identify and justify at least one bottleneck.
- List, in order, three steps a patient goes through from walking into an ER to being sent home.
- At which of your three steps do you think people wait the longest, and why?
- 1List the sequence of steps a patient moves through from arrival to discharge.
- 2Mark where waiting or queuing happens.
- 3Identify the step most likely to be a bottleneck and why.
- 4Annotate the with one systems constraint at each bottleneck.
- 5Submit your notes with bottlenecks labeled.
What did this day actually feel like?
Patient flow workflow
Mapping the actual path a patient takes, step by step, with the waits marked. The waits are where the design problem lives.
Our first map had eleven steps and four of them were waiting for information rather than waiting for a person.
AT HOME, THE WEEKEND BEFORE TUE FEB 9 Team contract We wrote and signed an actual team contract: who does what, how we decide when we disagree, and what happens if somebody does not deliver.
It felt over the top on Thursday. It was extremely useful in week four.
Turned in: tracker → recorded in Class Records
Fiction. There is no such student. The lessons, labs and dates are the real planned course; the student, the classmates and the conversations are invented.
The same day, drawn.
Mapping the actual path a patient takes, step by step, with the waits marked. The waits are where the design problem lives.
Fiction. There is no such student. The lessons, labs and dates are the real planned course; the student, the classmates and the conversations are invented.
🛠 Get unstuck · pick your level
🔑 Today's words · 5
Tap a word in the lesson for a plain meaning and one example. Recycled into next week's Do-Now.
Reasoning: connecting evidence to the claim
What separates sound reasoning from bad reasoning, and how do you check your own?
Reasoning is the part where you explain why your evidence supports your claim. It is the bridge. Without it, a claim and some data are just sitting next to each other; reasoning shows how the data leads to the conclusion, often using a scientific principle.
Good reasoning is logical (each step follows from the last), it actually uses your evidence (not just restates the claim), and it considers alternatives (could the data mean something else?). Bad reasoning leans on logical fallacies: jumping to conclusions, confusing correlation with causation, or attacking the person instead of the idea.
Check your own reasoning by trying to break it: state the opposite and see if your evidence rules it out. Ask “what would have to be true for me to be wrong?” If you cannot answer, your reasoning is not finished yet.
- • Logical: each step follows from the one before it.
- • Grounded: it uses your evidence, and names the principle that links it to the claim.
- • Fair: it considers other explanations and says why yours is better.
- • Self-checked: you tried to prove yourself wrong and could not.
- • Correlation is not causation: two things moving together does not mean one caused the other.
- • Hasty generalization: one case does not prove a rule.
- • Ad hominem: attacking the person, not their evidence.
Write the reasoning that links your evidence to your claim from earlier this week. Then write the strongest objection to it, and answer that objection.
Do the work · 80-minute blockfirst 5 min = hook▸
💡 Big idea: A bottleneck caps the flow of the whole system, so locating it is the first step to a fix, because adding effort anywhere else leaves patients stacked in front of the same slow gate.
- 0-10Introduce patient-flow diagrams: what they show and how to read them
- 10-30List and sequence every step from ER arrival to discharge
- 30-50Annotate the : mark waiting zones and queue points
- 50-65Bottleneck analysis: identify the highest-impact bottleneck and justify it with reasoning
- 65-77Submit annotated notes with bottlenecks labeled
- 77-80Exit check: one-sentence explanation of why your chosen bottleneck matters most
- • Today you will trace the path a patient takes through the emergency room from the moment they arrive.
- • Mapping that flow reveals where the system slows down -- and slow-downs in an ER can be life-threatening.
- • You will identify the bottleneck your team will eventually redesign.
- • This analysis connects directly to the systems-thinking strand of the BI capstone and to WebXam 072125 lab-process skills.
- • The sequence of steps a patient moves through from ER arrival to discharge.
- • What a bottleneck is and how to locate one by looking for where waiting or queuing accumulates.
- • How systems thinking connects a single bottleneck to the experience of every stakeholder .
Triage, patient flow, stakeholder needs, systems constraints. Debate: speed vs equity. · Patient flow
Day 3 of this lesson. Open this exact section in myPLTW (find it in Clever, Microsoft sign-in), then do the work below.
Do this: Open Problem 1 in your myPLTW course shell and locate the patient-flow or simulation activity to review the diagramming format.
Mark the activity complete in your tracker after submitting your annotated flow diagram.
The stakeholder map is done; by end of today your patient-flow diagram with a labeled bottleneck should be submitted.
Annotated patient-flow diagram with bottleneck labeled and a written justification.
The official PLTW activity stays inside myPLTW. If myPLTW will not open, use F1 and E1-E3 on this page to complete today's local evidence decision, then make up the official activity when access returns. Turn this in at the drop folder with your district Microsoft sign-in, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count as submitted. Doing the activity in myPLTW does not.
Check things off as you work, then submit. This tells Mr. Mendoza how you're doing so he can help the class. It does not replace turning in your producible through the submission route shown below.
Use the code Mr. Mendoza gave you, not your name. Saved on this device.
Triage, patient flow, stakeholder needs, systems constraints. Debate: speed vs equity. · Patient flow workflow
Open Problem 1 in your myPLTW course shell and locate the patient-flow or simulation activity to review the diagramming format.
The stakeholder map is done; by end of today your patient-flow diagram with a labeled bottleneck should be submitted.
This is how Mr. Mendoza sees the class keeping pace with PLTW. Be honest, it only helps if it is accurate.
🎯 Diagram the patient flow through an emergency room and locate bottlenecks.
- List the sequence of steps a patient moves through from arrival to discharge.
- Mark where waiting or queuing happens.
- Identify the step most likely to be a bottleneck and why.
- Annotate the with one systems constraint at each bottleneck.
- Submit your notes with bottlenecks labeled.
Notebook check: Patient-flow diagram annotated with queue points, one identified bottleneck, and a written justification of why it is the highest-impact constraint.
Turn this in at the drop folder with your district Microsoft sign-in, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count as submitted. Doing the activity in myPLTW does not. Use the checklist just below and upload by 11:29 PM for full credit. Absent with an excused absence? You get two school days for every day you were absent, so this deadline moves with you.
| Task | Who |
|---|---|
| List the sequence of steps a patient moves through from arrival to discharge. | _______ |
| Mark where waiting or queuing happens. | _______ |
| Identify the step most likely to be a bottleneck and why. | _______ |
| Annotate the with one systems constraint at each bottleneck. | _______ |
| Submit your notes with bottlenecks labeled. | _______ |
Working solo? Put your own name in "Who" for every row.
- You can diagram patient flow from arrival to discharge.
- You can identify and justify at least one bottleneck.
- 1Do thisDiagram the patient flow through an emergency room and locate bottlenecks.
- 2Use this resource
- 3Submit thisNotebook check: Patient-flow workflow diagram annotated with queue points, one identified bottleneck, and a written justification of why it is the highest-impact constraint.
- 4Submit it here
- 1Open the drop folder.
- 2Sign in with your district Microsoft account, not a personal one.
- 3Upload the file, named Lastname_Firstname__Assignment Title.
- 4Your own upload panel says Uploaded with a green check: that is your receipt.
Turn this in at the drop folder with your district Microsoft sign-in, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count as submitted. Doing the activity in myPLTW does not. Biotechnology for Health (Biomedical Innovations) › Triage, patient flow, stakeholder needs, systems constraints. Debate: speed vs equity. › Notebook checkOpen the drop folder
Learn it · deck, reading, and vocabulary▸
The deck carries the prior idea forward, lets you inspect an analogy, maps the rule to biology, and ends with the same evidence decision and exit ticket used on this page.
Generated from this lesson's canonical data with a red-team citation check.
A stakeholder map makes invisible needs visible so that conflicting needs surface as constraints early, because a need you never named cannot be designed for and will break the system later.
A bottleneck caps the flow of the whole system, so locating it is the first step to a fix, because adding effort anywhere else leaves patients stacked in front of the same slow gate.
A bridge prototype is tested against a load limit, cost limit, and user need before revision.
- Which requirement is a criterion?
- Which limit is a constraint?
- What test result should trigger a redesign?
A design improves when evidence is compared with explicit criteria and constraints.
Biomedical designs also require , ethics, and biological validation beyond a physical prototype test.
- • Bridge requirements map to design criteria.
- • Load results map to E1-E3.
- • Revision maps to the next evidence-based iteration.
Driving question: A patient enters an ER at 7:00 and is not seen by a doctor until 8:45. Where in that hour and forty-five minutes did the waiting actually pile up, and why is that one step, not the whole system, the thing to fix?
What you already know: A stakeholder map makes invisible needs visible so that conflicting needs surface as constraints early, because a need you never named cannot be designed for and will break the system later.
New idea: A bottleneck caps the flow of the whole system, so locating it is the first step to a fix, because adding effort anywhere else leaves patients stacked in front of the same slow gate.
Visual or model: F1. F1. A lesson illustration or teaching diagram for Patient flow workflow. Use it with E1-E3; it is a model or context image, not experimental or patient data. What to notice: Trace the labeled system, test, or design relationship and identify which evidence should trigger revision.
- Observe or measure the relevant feature in Patient flow .
- Organize the observation with a stable evidence ID.
- Apply this rule: A design improves when evidence is compared with explicit criteria and constraints.
- Choose the option the evidence supports and state the limit of the conclusion.
Real biomedical example: A patient enters an ER at 7:00 and is not seen by a doctor until 8:45. Where in that hour and forty-five minutes did the waiting actually pile up, and why is that one step, not the whole system, the thing to fix?
What the evidence supports: E1-E3 and F1 support the daily take-home when the response meets the stated success criteria.
What it cannot prove: The package does not support claims beyond this lesson's or any real patient diagnosis.
- • : Sorting patients by urgency so the sickest are treated first, a core emergency-care skill and a HOSA event topic.
- • stakeholder: Any person or group affected by a project or decision, such as users, patients, families, or the team building a solution.
- • system: A set of parts that work together as a connected whole, where a change in one part can affect the others, such as an or a designed device.
- • constraint: A limit or requirement that a design must work within, such as a budget, available time, materials, or rules.
- • : The ordered sequence of steps and handoffs used to carry a task from start to finish in a consistent, repeatable way.
- • inefficiency: A situation where a process wastes time, energy, or resources, producing less useful output than the input should allow.
Use it now: Choose one decision option. Cite E1 and E3, then explain how the rule connects the evidence to your choice.
Go further, optional: The source links below are optional enrichment. Every fact required for today's local evidence decision appears in this lesson package.
The sequence of steps a patient moves through from ER arrival to discharge.
Limit: E1 supplies context or an observation; it does not by itself establish the explanation.
A bottleneck caps the flow of the whole system, so locating it is the first step to a fix, because adding effort anywhere else leaves patients stacked in front of the same slow gate.
Limit: E2 is a teaching statement or comparison and must be checked against the task evidence.
You can diagram patient flow from arrival to discharge.
Limit: E3 supports only the result or product criterion named here; it cannot justify a broader clinical or causal claim.
PLTW-BFH-2027-02-08 · Simulated classroom evidence scenario
Your role: biomedical design team member
Decision: Your team must decide what the evidence from Patient flow supports before submitting the notebook record named on the lesson page.
- • Select the option best supported by E1-E3.
- • Select a reasonable alternative and name the evidence it would require.
- • Delay the claim because the evidence does not distinguish the options.
Response: State one choice, cite at least two evidence IDs, explain the rule that connects them, and add one limitation. Submit it as the notebook record.
Claim ceiling: The supplied lesson evidence can support an observation, pattern, classroom mechanism, or next-step decision about Patient flow . It cannot by itself prove causation, establish a real clinical diagnosis, or justify action outside this classroom task.
Reason for review: Your team must decide what the evidence from Patient flow supports before submitting the notebook record named on the lesson page.
Context: In a flow system, the bottleneck is the single step that caps how fast everyone can move, so finding it is the highest-leverage thing a designer can do.
- • T1: List the sequence of steps a patient moves through from arrival to discharge.
- • T2: Mark where waiting or queuing happens.
- • T3: Identify the step most likely to be a bottleneck and why.
- • T4: Annotate the with one systems constraint at each bottleneck.
- • T5: Submit your notes with bottlenecks labeled.
- • E1: The sequence of steps a patient moves through from ER arrival to discharge.
- • E2: A bottleneck caps the flow of the whole system, so locating it is the first step to a fix, because adding effort anywhere else leaves patients stacked in front of the same slow gate.
- • E3: You can diagram patient flow from arrival to discharge.
Measurements: No patient measurement is supplied unless it appears explicitly in E1-E3 or F1. Do not invent a value.
Figure finding: Teaching diagram for Patient flow . Trace the labeled system, test, or design relationship and identify which evidence should trigger revision. This is a teaching model, not patient or experimental data.
Uncertainty: This is a composite classroom scenario. Missing history, measurements, or confirmation tests remain unknown and limit the conclusion.
- • The solution must address the stated need in Patient flow .
- • The decision must be supported by E1-E3.
- • The final product must make the success criteria visible.
- • Complete the work inside the 80-minute block.
- • Use only supplied or teacher-approved materials and evidence.
- • Do not trade , accessibility, or privacy for speed.
- • and evidence quality: must pass before scoring other criteria.
- • User need and effectiveness: highest scored criterion.
- • Time, cost, and ease of use: compare only after and effectiveness pass.
Test evidence: For each option, record the E1-E3 result that supports or fails each criterion. Do not assign a score without a named observation.
- Version or option tested
- Criterion met or missed
- Evidence ID and result
- Revision made
- Reason for the revision
- Need and user
- Criteria and constraints
- Chosen option and evidence
- Test result
- Revision and reason
Students often think Students believe that to make an ER faster you should speed up every step, so improvement means shaving time off the whole process equally.. The trap: The trap is that speeding up a step that is not the bottleneck does nothing to total wait time. The bottleneck is the slowest gate, so patients just pile up in front of it no matter how fast the other steps run. Only fixing the constraint step moves the number, because a chain flows at the speed of its tightest link.
Patient-flow workflow (notebook entry)
Steps from arrival to discharge:
1. Arrival and check-in
2. Triage (severity sorting)
3. Waiting room
4. Treatment room (exam and tests)
5. Lab and imaging results
6. Decision (admit or discharge)
7. Discharge
Queue points (where waiting accumulates): after check-in before triage, and especially in the waiting room before a treatment room opens, and again while waiting on lab and imaging results.
Identified bottleneck: the wait for an open treatment room (step 3 to step 4).
Justification: this is the highest-impact constraint because the ER has a fixed number of treatment rooms, so when they are full, every downstream patient waits no matter how fast triage works. Fixing triage speed alone will not help if there is nowhere to put patients.
Systems-thinking note: a single backed-up treatment-room queue raises the wait for every patient behind it, so one bottleneck affects every stakeholder downstream.
This model shows the level of evidence and organization needed to complete: A diagram of the patient's path from arrival to discharge, annotated with queue points and one justified bottleneck.
- Date and label the entry.
- Record the procedure, observation, or design decision clearly.
- End with what the evidence means and the next step.
Keep the structure. Replace the question, facts, measurements, and evidence. Then recheck units, vocabulary, and whether the conclusion goes beyond the evidence.
Also due today: Submit the annotated workflow diagram on the class site, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class by end of period.
- CER:
- Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: make a claim, back it with evidence, explain your reasoning.
- SOP:
- Standard Operating Procedure, the exact steps to follow (especially in a lab).
- Tracker:
- Your PLTW progress log where you record completed evidence.
- myPLTW:
- The PLTW course site where you do the online activities. Find it in Clever with your Microsoft sign-in, right next to Schoology.
Tap the speaker to hear a term. Add two of these to your notebook glossary with a definition and an example in your own words.
Pick just 2 or 3 words from today and make them yours: write what each one means in your own words, name the context clue or evidence that helped, then give one example from what you actually did in Patient flow workflow. Try your own words first; the glossary is there if you get stuck. This is voluntary and counts as extra credit, so keep it short.
Saved on this device. Show Mr. Mendoza or add these to your notebook glossary to claim the extra credit.
Classroom documents for this lesson are posted in Schoology. Open Clever, then Schoology, and find each one by the name shown on its card.
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched Emergency room design and by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-1_Emergency-Room/1.1_Emergency-Room; keywords:er design. Score 138. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched Emergency room design and by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-1_Emergency-Room/1.1_Emergency-Room; keywords:triage, admission. Score 138. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Use this as the classroom resource for Emergency room design and .
Placement rationale
Matched Emergency room design and by path:Biomedical-Innovations/Problem-1_Emergency-Room/1.1_Emergency-Room; keywords:triage, er design. Score 138. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
How to get there: open Clever and sign in with your Microsoft (district) account. Both myPLTW and Schoology are in Clever. Do the activity in myPLTW. Turn the work in on this site or hand it to Mr. Mendoza, because that is the step that counts as submitted. Schoology only shows your report-card grade later.
Check yourself · commit, then reveal▸
Claim ceiling for this check: The supplied lesson evidence can support an observation, pattern, classroom mechanism, or next-step decision about Patient flow . It cannot by itself prove causation, establish a real clinical diagnosis, or justify action outside this classroom task.
An ER's registration desk processes patients in 2 minutes each, but there is only one triage nurse who takes 15 minutes per patient. Where is the bottleneck, and would adding a second registration clerk help?
Write an answer and pick a confidence to unlock the key.
Fast retrieval with instant answers, not the commit-then-reveal check above. Try each from memory first: write what you remember about the earlier units, then check yourself here.
Go further and get help▸
What today's skills lead to. These are real health-science careers this course builds toward. Tap one to see, on the US Department of Labor's O*NET site, what the job actually involves, what it pays, and how fast it is growing.
Run the ER simulation individually using a teacher-provided patient-flow dataset: trace patients through the , identify bottlenecks in the data, and submit an annotated flow diagram.
CDC Emergency Department VisitsThen submit your Notebook check. Turn this in at the drop folder with your district Microsoft sign-in, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count as submitted. Doing the activity in myPLTW does not.
Class still runs. Complete the online activity above (it's self-guided). Need the concept taught without a teacher? Use this authoritative explainer:
CDC Emergency Department Data- CompleteEvery required part of the artifact is present, nothing left blank.
- AccurateThe science and the data are correct and match the evidence.
- Scientific reasoningYou explain your claim with evidence and reasoning (CER), not just an answer.
- Professional communicationClear, organized, labeled, and written the way a clinician or scientist would.
- SubmittedTurned in the right way, on the class site or handed to Mr. Mendoza in class, and confirmed. Not in Schoology: that is where the report-card grade appears later.