Many of us at Regions know that Rob is persistently living the dream. You’ll struggle to find someone more positive or excited than Rob and it shows. Rob uses this seemingly endless depth of positive energy to manage patient complaints, peer review cases and behavioral health emergency policy and procedure development. Balance this with his family, hockey and residency teaching, you’ll not find a more well rounded ED doc.
Show Links
- Show Outline
- Introduction
- Shift startup
- Shift wrap up
- Mid shift stress, getting behind and bladder capacity
- Feedback at end of shift vs during shift
- Managing workflow during a shift, prioritizing tasks
- Kale vs Cake
- Pre-ordering
- Delegating work during shift
- Mini mental breaks during shift
- Purposeful relationship building with other staff during shift
- Building relationships with patients to feel fulfilled rather than drained
- Closing
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Brad:
I listened to you and Rob and haven’t had time to check the others out, but will. Enjoyed the discussion.
Personally, I struggle with documentation. I would try to keep up on charts but noticed that it stressed me for 10 years when I invariably couldn’t keep up, so I gave up. I tend to chart 1/2 during shift and 1/2 at home. I do the charts that I can or that neatly fit into my shift or that require particularly meticulous documentation and do the other at home. Takes time, but limits stress during shift as I’ve given up that fight.
I’d be interested in more tangible suggestions. Laura Schrag was one of my partners at North and she is an absolute rock star (she’d be a great guest for you). Her big tip for being super productive was loading up as much as she could take 2 hours before the end of her shift and then dig out. I’ve got a partner now who challenges himself to stay caught up on charts and, just about every shift, picks up 2 patients in the last hour of his shift and dispos them. He takes pride in it. May be the sick sepsis patient…intubate, flood, line, pressors, admit. Could be a laceration. Could be a chest pain. Not just chart picking hangnails and sniffles.
There are also opportunities for ED docs to get side hustles in medicine and that would be interesting, as well. I am the Stroke Director for our hospital and the medical director for 3 local ems agencies. Some of the community docs may not realize the ways that they can diversify their practices to limit ED hours.
Keep em coming.
Great job.
Wade
Wade – thanks much for your detailed comment. The struggle is REAL and we are working through some options as a group to see what we can do. The reality I find is that we got into medicine to help sick people and most of us have an endless line of sick people (or at least uncomfortable people, some of whom are sick) waiting. So it can be real tough to stop and document. Plus the pressures of moving people and matching your partners. I’m really interested in exploring that more as I think it can grind people out of their practice. – thanks again, great to hear from you!