There are numerous health care fields within allied health. Time management is crucial for success in every one of these disciplines. Your team of professionals must be good at an extensive array of skills, and it can become overwhelming at times. Here are a few tips on creating an allied health to-do list that you can share with your allied health employees to help them better manage patient care.
ABCs Are a Great Place to Start
No matter what specialty a health care professional works in, starting with the ABCs is the most important place for all health care practitioners to create their checklist.
- A is for airway. Does the patient have a patent airway?
- B is for breathing. How is the rate, depth, pattern, and sounds of the patient’s breathing?
- C is for circulation. This includes checks such as heart rate, BP, perfusion, and beating of the heart.
The ABCs are the most vital part of prioritizing any patient care. If any part of the ABCs is compromised, you will need to adjust the plan. All other tasks are non-urgent, and you can instruct your team to perform these tasks to make their day go smooth and efficient.
Non-Urgent Prioritization
When your allied health care team has taken care of their patients’ urgent needs, the next step is to address the non-urgent needs. Separating the tasks into categories will help your employees decide what to do first. Here are a few examples:
- Issues that require action before they can happen
- Time-sensitive things
- Things that other people can accomplish
- Patient schedules/meetings
- How many items a patient requires to have done
After you have a general timeline of when to accomplish certain things, you can use this as a launching point and fill in the gaps and group activities if possible. Try to emphasize getting things done most safely and efficiently possible.
Tips and Tricks
Your team of allied health professionals is balancing multiple responsibilities, projects, and deadlines. Time management is crucial for quality patient care. Team members should always prioritize the most critical tasks first. A schedule helps, and you could use something like a physical planner or Post-it notes. Scheduling allows workers to see the workload and judge their progress physically. Keep them focused; stay off Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram until after work. Try to curtail as many distractions as possible. Your team of health care workers might feel as though there are not enough hours in the day to finish tasks, let alone prioritize them. That’s why good time management is critical. Prioritizing emergent care first, then moving on to non-urgent care items will help your team stay on track and get things done.
Arbor Associates can provide flexible workforce solutions to meet your facility’s needs. Whether you need temporary or direct hire, employees, the professionals at Arbor Associates can help your organization thrive.