Scheduling

The whole point of time management and utilization of a to-do list or task list is to help to reduce your stress and help you to feel productive throughout the day. So, now that we have identified your task and we have prioritised, let's go ahead and dedicate schedule time. There are five steps to scheduling daily tasks effectively. And the very first one is to know what your schedule is, how many work hours do you have available during the week? Is it four on Monday, maybe eight on Tuesday? Very important that you identify how much time you have available to dedicate to the tasks that you need to accomplish. Next we've already discussed this, but it's very important to as a team identify those busiest patient times of the day. Whether it be patients coming in or phone's ringing, whatever it might be. We typically see this around 3 p.m. and later throughout the day. It may be different for your area, but it's important that we identify this because that is not a time to be working on a high priority task. That high priority task is focusing on our patient care and being a team so that we can make sure everybody’s needs are met. Next, we have scheduling high priority tasks and when do we do this? Well, first of all, those high priority tasks are tasks that we know must be completed and again, we want to do those typically the first part of the day or when it is slower throughout the day.

Let's talk about contingency time. It's very important that throughout the week, you book some contingency time that allows you to have some flexibility, should that unexpected incident happen throughout the week and you get a little bit behind. you want to be able to make sure you have that built in time, contingency time, to have the flexibility to get caught up.

And then finally, what to do with that extra time, should you have extra time. Well, there will be time that you have available and how you choose to utilize that time is up to you. To be a star player, always continue to learn. There’s so much that we can learn to contribute to our team as well as to our patient care. So, use your time wisely and invest in yourself. Now once you find you have 30-40 tasks on your to-do list and it might start to feel a little overwhelming. So, what do we do? Well, at this point, it's important to review that task list with your practice administrator and then with your team members and say “is there something that makes sense to have someone else do because it falls in line more with their daily role within the practice.” It’s more efficient and by having this communication and working together as a team, you will find that you have a more positive culture, you're more efficient, and that your patients are having a better experience.