Every workplace has its own pace of work and, oftentimes, the industry that the workplace belongs to often determines just what pace to expect.
Your classic 9-to-5 office job, be it sales-related or not, goes at a somewhat predictable pace, with a nice little lunch break built into it.
However, workers in industries like the healthcare industry understand that predictability is not to be found in every workplace, as a hospital can be quite chaotic. A doctor’s office, on any given day, can see a constant influx of patients, with only a limited staff to attend to them all.
With so many patients and so few physicians, organizing a workday can be a significant challenge for practicing physicians.
Time is a currency for a physician, and, as so many of them work long hours, sometimes working particularly exhausting weeks where the hours worked are up to 80—and that comes from a pre-COVID survey.
Naturally, then, time management is essential for doctors, so read on to find out some good time management tips for physicians, and how the Time Timer can assist in that.
Task Prioritization
Few doctors show up at work with only a couple of tasks to focus on during a workday.
For most doctors, the issue at hand is figuring out how to prioritize certain tasks.
Our Time Timer PLUS Make Time Edition can be very useful for doctors wishing to prioritize their tasks. With this special Time Timer, you can set the timer for up to 120 minutes, sure to cover whatever task you have to do—except certain intensive surgeries. Though you likely would not be allowed to bring a Time Timer into the operating room regardless.
For areas of the doctor’s office or hospital where you can use a Time Timer, the PLUS Make Time Edition will fit right in. It is easily transportable and can stand upright, making its turquoise time-elapse disk readily visible.
We recommend the Time Timer PLUS Make Time Edition for this particular task because it comes with a notepad that is specifically tailored to prioritization tasks. Simply write down the task you wish to complete, and the timeframe you have, and then set the timer and get to work, glancing occasionally at the timer to see how on track you currently are.
The notepads can be used to keep patient-specific notes so that you can fill in any necessary details or reminders you must know before offering treatment.
Use Teamwork to Your Advantage
A medical workplace is going to be collaborative, but this does not in itself mean that the workplace is organized to the best of its abilities.
What a doctor needs to do to create a more efficient workplace is to make sure that everyone on the team is staying busy, because work left undone either leads to pain for patients or exhaustion (and with that, sloppiness) for the workers who pick up the slack.
With the Time Timer MOD + Dry Erase Board, you can have a readily visible dry erase board that can be used to delegate tasks to workers.
This is especially helpful for a smaller workplace, where communication between most of the staff is usual and so having a visible board for assigning who does what, and under what timeframe through the dry erase board’s built-in Time Timer, can be especially helpful.
This way, doctors do not get bogged down in work that plenty of others on the staff could readily do, such as ordering supplies or administering shots. If you are a doctor, your time needs to revolve around doing what you were trained to do, which is examine and treat patients, so that you can see as many of them as possible.
Carve Out Time to Relax and Reenergize
You can use most of our Time Timer visual timers for this one, with the idea here being that you set a predefined time to relax during your workday, or lunch break, to, well, relax.
On your break, set the Time Timer for however long you can afford to spend, and do not touch the Time Timer until the disk has elapsed.
Settle in and enjoy your lunch—do not rush through it. If you finish early, do not go back to work early, but enjoy the remaining leisure time.
You can carve out short breaks, perhaps for meditation or even brief naps, with the Time Timer, so you can refocus yourself and continue to deliver a high level of performance for all of your patients.