One of the things you can count on in a typical day in medicine is that everything and everyone is vying for your attention.
You may have a schedule of patients to see or procedures to perform, but during that time there are numerous potential interruptions that can cause you to lose focus.
Patients are calling with questions or new issues. Nurses are sending messages. Insurance companies need you for a peer to peer call. Results need to be reviewed and discussed. Images need to be viewed. Refills have to be signed. Students and residents need teaching. A family member has questions. A colleague wants to discuss a patient. A letter needs to be written. The emergency room is calling about your patient. Your scheduler needs your input on an add-on patient. The list goes on and on.
Your brain is on overload all day long.
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of starting your work, getting distracted, and starting something else before finishing your original task, namely closing your chart after seeing a patient.
Please remember the following mantra to live by at work: See a patient, close a chart.
It seems so simple, but it’s much easier to NOT do this and see a patient, answer a call.
Or … see a patient, review results.
Or … see a patient, sign a bunch of refills.
Or even more commonly, see a patient, see the next patient because you are running behind and they are waiting or may be frustrated.
While attending to various tasks in the middle of your clinic may sound like a good use of time and these tasks eventually do need to get done, the decision of when to do them can make or break your work flow and cost you valuable time in the long run.
Mindful Doc Mom
While all of these other options sound like a good use of time and are still all tasks that eventually do need to get done, the decision of when to do them can make or break your work flow and cost you valuable time in the long run.
When you are constantly task switching, you are losing small amounts of time that accumulate and grow.
Mindful Doc Mom
When you are constantly shifting your focus from one task to another or “task switching”, you are losing small amounts of time that accumulate and grow. Studies looking at adults switching between different tasks show that participants lost time with each task switch (Rubinstein J, Meyer D. and Evans J, Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2001) . As tasks got more complex, they lost more time.
The researchers describe two stages to executive control processes: goal shifting and rule activation. Goal shifting is where you change the goal of what you are doing in the moment. Rule activation is where you turn off the rules for the original task and turn on the rules for the new task. Although the cost of each of these may be small (sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch), they add up over time especially if you are constantly switching back and forth between tasks.
Your job, therefore, is to direct your brain to focus on one task at a time until completion.
See a patient, close a chart.
You have just seen the patient and the visit is fresh in your mind. You know exactly what happened and what you discussed. Document that now before the details get lost.
Then, once your chart is closed, you can choose to either move on to the next patient or complete another task that can be done quickly and focus on that before moving on to the next thing.
I personally like to chunk my time for different tasks in different parts of the day. My main focus is always seeing patients and closing my charts. Patient calls come next, but the more urgent ones get prioritized. Anything nonurgent is done in empty chunks of time either at lunch, after clinic, or during unexpected free moments such as faster than expected visits with leftover time or extra time due to late patients or no shows. At the end of my clinic, when all my charts are closed, I now can focus on all the remaining calls or results or other tasks (I pick one, finish, then move to the other) and just keep going until they are complete or I’m out of the time I chose to spend or time I need to leave. My mind is clearer to focus because I don’t have the heavy weight of having open charts.
You can stay very focused during the day when you are always aware that your main priority is seeing a patient and closing their chart. You can view closing the chart as part of the patient visit and refuse to move on to the next visit until the chart is closed, even if you’re running late. The patient might be a bit upset for the wait, but they’ll be more upset by having poorer care when they call about an issue later and their doctor or staff or covering colleagues have no idea what happened because their doctor didn’t close their chart and communicate properly. You don’t have to entertain results or calls or other things that you can ignore unless they are truly urgent.
You can direct your brain and your time rather than let them both be hijacked by the never-ending outside forces of medicine.
If you want to learn more about how coaching can help you get your charts closed and your life back, get on a free, no obligation Zoom call with me by clicking on my calendar link below and scheduling a time.
