Essential Time Management Strategies for Physicians
Healthcare is a demanding field, and the number of patients is continuing to grow. That’s why many of today’s doctors struggle with physician time management. It’s also why stress and burnout are on the rise among healthcare professionals.
So what’s the solution? When it comes to time management for healthcare professionals, there are lots of things that you can do to streamline your schedule. Read below to learn why time management strategies for physicians are crucial, and to discover a few essential time management strategies that you can employ within your own practice.
Why is Time Management for Doctors Crucial?
As a physician, it might seem obvious: Good time management for doctors is a must because it’s the only way to make sure that you can devote time to each individual patient and their unique needs. However, in today’s demanding healthcare environment, it’s also easy to lose sight of some of the other reasons why you should consistently be working to improve physician time management. Here are a few key reasons that highlight the importance of time management for healthcare professionals:
- Improved time management strategies for physicians help improve patient outcomes by enabling you to ensure that each patient receives adequate time so that you can better diagnose their concerns and create comprehensive treatment plans.
- Better physician time management leads to a reduced risk of burnout. Healthcare is a demanding field, and when time is managed poorly, it can lead to stress. Creating a balanced, streamlined schedule helps you better maintain mental and physical health.
- You can also build a better work-life balance with improved physician time management. To maintain your overall well-being, it’s crucial to be able to set aside time for your family, friends, hobbies, and everything else that you need to properly unwind.
- Improving physician time management can help you improve your career, too. It takes time to develop skills or pursue educational opportunities—and these are essentials that can help you grow as a professional.
Try These Time Management Strategies for Physicians
Ready for some practical time management strategies for physicians? Read below for ideas.
The Eisenhower Matrix as Time Management for Healthcare Professionals
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, once said, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
This statement led Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to develop what is now known as the “Eisenhower Matrix.” The Eisenhower Matrix is a task management system that has been used by professionals in virtually every industry—and it’s a great technique for time management for healthcare professionals, too.
Here’s how it works:
- Tasks that are both urgent and important should be handled immediately.
- Tasks that are important but not urgent should be saved for later.
- Tasks that are urgent but not important should be delegated to others.
- Tasks that are neither urgent nor important should be eliminated from your routine.
Under this method, you can improve physician time management and streamline daily activities by removing the tasks that fall into the last two categories from your to-do list. This frees up time so that you can better tend to tasks that fall into the first two categories.
Time Management for Doctors With Technology
Modern technology offers a multitude of tools for physician time management. If you haven’t already, look into the following tools:
- Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems: Most modern medical practices (88.2%, according to the CDC) rely on EHRs at least to some degree. However, in many practices, this means EHRs are being used in conjunction with physical paperwork—and that can lead to both disorganization and a lot of data entry work. If your practice hasn’t switched to a fully digitized health record environment, you can improve time management for healthcare professionals in your practice by going digital.
- Digital Scheduling Tools: Digital scheduling tools like calendars and task management apps improve time management for doctors in two ways. First, they make it easy to plan and track your own schedule. Secondly, by onboarding your staff into your task management app of choice, you can make it easier to use methods like the Eisenhower Matrix since these tools give you the ability to digitally track, manage, and delegate tasks across the board.
- Telemedicine Platforms: Not all patient appointments need to be held in person. Practices that adopt telemedicine improve time management for doctors by allowing them to provide care more efficiently. This is because telemedicine is often easier for the patient. Instead of being late to an appointment because they were stuck in traffic or caught up in work, patients can easily log in to a telemedicine platform where it’s most convenient for them.
Time Blocking as Time Management for Doctors
Much like the Eisenhower Matrix, time blocking is another technique that is popular in the business world—and it works well for physician time management, too. The idea behind time blocking is to create blocks of time that are devoted to a single task. Since you’re only focusing on one thing at a time, you should be able to accomplish that task more efficiently than if you were juggling multiple things at once.
In practice, time blocking as time management for healthcare professionals looks like this:
- Block out time for patient consultations.
- Create separate time blocks that allow you to focus on administrative tasks outside patient consultation hours.
- Include time blocks for studying, online coursework, or other types of professional development.
- Block out time for family, friends, hobbies, and other important things outside of work.
- Ensure that your schedule includes empty time blocks that you can use as buffers to account for unexpected delays.
Regularly Review Your Schedule to Improve Physician Time Management
As with anything, when it comes to time management for physicians, there is always room for improvement. That’s why you should regularly look over your schedule. As you’re reviewing your schedule, do the following:
- Employ self-awareness: Learn to identify the areas where you’re spending the most time and energy. Do these areas need the attention that you’re giving them, or can you identify ways to improve physician time management?
- Analyze appointment patterns: After enough time practicing medicine, most physicians notice that certain times of day, days of the week, or seasons of the year are busier than others. Part of good time management for doctors is being able to anticipate these patterns, you can proactively make more room in your schedule for patient time—and save other tasks for off-peak times.
- Ask your staff: Sometimes, the best way to improve time management for doctors is to ask for an outside perspective. In an open, communicative environment, staff members can point out things like how you rarely plan enough time for travel, or how you often don’t schedule enough time for certain procedures.
Improve Time Management by Minimizing Interruptions
For doctors, dozens of interactions with different people each day is part of the way of life. However, it’s all too easy to let all of these interactions spiral out of control, which can lead to poor physician time management. This is especially true now that most people have a constant stream of emails, text messages, and other notifications buzzing away on their phones.
Minimizing interruptions as much as possible is one of the most important time management strategies for physicians. For example, during hours when you’re tending to patient consultations, you can mute your phone to keep the focus on patients rather than taking breaks in between appointments to tend to notifications. Similarly, when you’re tending to administrative duties, it’s best to designate this as “closed door” time and ask staff to keep interruptions to a minimum so that you can work efficiently.
When it comes to emails and other notifications, use the time blocking method to designate a smaller chunk of time toward handling these on a daily basis. This helps you keep up with communications while not letting them disrupt the rest of your daily routine.
The AAOPM Makes it Easy to Fit Education Into Your Schedule
Even with the best of time management strategies for physicians, it can still be difficult to find time for educational opportunities that will help you further your career. Here at the American Academy of Procedural Medicine, we work hard to make our courses as accessible as possible. Many offer online learning components so that you can learn at your own pace—and we offer in-person workshops and training at locations all over the United States so that you can choose a location that is convenient to you.
Want to learn more about one of our certification programs? Feel free to contact us for additional details.