How does time management affect health care workers?
“Time management is more than just the process of planning.” Studies show that it actually has the strongest effect on our mental health in addition to boosting productivity.
“Be more productive with your time management.”
Whether you’re at school, work, home, or even when you’re trying to enjoy your vacation, this is a sentiment we are constantly being told. Given everything that’s gained from managing your time better, it makes sense that it’s popular advice. No matter where it’s practiced, time management is an important skill for productivity and your overall well-being, especially in healthcare.
Time management is more than just the process of planning. You have to keep a conscious control over your time to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. The value of that time means something different from person to person and that’s ok!
Some folks enjoy spending time on projects and others would rather use any free time to unwind. Remember that being productive is not always about working harder but working towards something efficiently with a positive outcome. That means getting to spend more time on yourself and less time burdened by tasks that could be structured better instead.
So, how does time management help support health care workers?
Time is critical when you’re supporting patients through recovery. If you don’t have the tools to structure your day efficiently, administrative tasks become strenuous, patients wait longer for appointments and valuable free time is lost.
If you’re a healthcare professional, you probably didn’t go through all of those tough years of schooling just to handle paperwork or troubleshoot your medical software all day, right? Yet, that’s a major time sink for workers in the industry.
The point isn’t about getting out of doing paperwork though!
Being provided with the right tools and methods to handle administrative tasks reduces the amount of time needed to finish them. Up-to-date software helps remove time-consuming obstacles like troubleshooting, searching through poorly designed pages for patient information and waiting on loading times to finish daily tasks. These types of software tools keep therapists moving smoothly throughout their day while also cutting down on resources and workplace burnout.
Time management also helps you become productive towards bettering your mental health and well-being. In fact, admin burnout is a major problem for healthcare workers. Burnout is the physical, mental and often emotional exhaustion gained from stress.
One study found:
“On the whole, time management has a slightly stronger impact on wellbeing than on performance. This is unexpected, considering how the dominant discourse points to time management as a skill for professional career development.
Of course, the dominant discourse also frames time management as necessary for wellbeing and stress reduction, but to a much lesser extent. Our finding that time management has a stronger influence on wellbeing in no way negates the importance of time management as a work skill. Rather, this finding challenges the intuitive notion that time management is more effective for work than for other life domains,” (Aeon, et al., 2021).
It’s no surprise to anyone that time management is important in healthcare from a productivity standpoint. It’s impactful though to see the power time management has when it is focused towards taking care of our health care workers.
Learn more about administrative and academic burnout on our recent blog post from guest blogger, Melanie Inouye.
How has the pandemic affected the importance of time management?
COVID-19 has caused frontline workers to feel even more of this pressure on the job. The recent KFF/Washington Post Frontline Health Care Workers Survey finds that 55% of frontline health care workers feel burned out when coming to work these days.
Time management is a tool that helps clinicians get back to what they enjoy doing about their work: helping patients. With less time needed to spend on administrative tasks, the more available workers can keep themselves for appointments. Minimizing the number of hours needed on non-patient-related duties alone helps many workers with this tension they’re feeling, especially during the pandemic.
For patients, COVID-19 has encouraged them to become more vigilant in their approach to health. More people are paying better attention to preventative measures such as social distancing, washing hands, and wearing masks in public. Having this widespread change of behavior has created a new type of patient: “one who has the potential to upend the way health care works and could lead to improved care for decades to come,” (Nundy & Hsu, 2021).
This healthier approach helps take pressure off of health care workers by lowering the number of patient visits needed overall.
Theralytics as a time-saving tool
Theralytics is our solution to outdated medical software, custom-tailored by real therapists. Software tools like patient and therapist dashboards are built with features that help clinicians manage their time more efficiently on the job. With Theralytics, facilities are able to effectively take care of their workers, put more time into treatment plans, and boost patient satisfaction through improved recovery rates.
These tools have been refined directly from the experiences of therapists to ease the burden of time-consuming tasks.
- Patient profiles are an all-in-one answer to scattered workflows in patient care. Streamlining assessments and documenting medical notes directly to the patient profile makes it easy to find everything you need to know about your patient all in one place.
- Therapist dashboards keep all of your favorite tools on one page. Checking your calendar, recent messages and notes in one user-friendly dashboard saves time throughout the day.
- Therapist dashboards
- Calendar scheduling takes the stress out of planning. Viewing all of your upcoming appointments as well as your patient’s therapy sessions in a multi-view calendar keeps you on track during the day.
- Messaging allows for easy reporting between all parties. Enhancing communication between therapists, patients or even your patient’s family cuts down on unnecessary time spent looking for answers.
Make better use of your time by bringing Theralytics to your facility and joining our community!
Not having enough time left in the day to spend on ourselves is something we all struggle with. Time management is such an important skill when structuring your day. As we’re building new software tools, we’re working closely with therapists to find answers to all of the time-consuming obstacles they face on the job.
Have any time-saving tips and advice that you’d like to share? Leave a comment and help others in our community get more out of their day!
References:
“Do you spend more time on administrative tasks than your peers?” Tanya Albert Henry, 13 November 2018,
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/sustainability/do-you-spend-more-time-administrative-tasks-your-peers
Aeon B, Faber A, Panaccio A (2021) “Does time management work? A meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0245066.” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245066
“KFF/The Washington Post Frontline Health Care Workers Survey.” Kaiser Family Foundation, 06 April 2021, https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-the-washington-post-frontline-health-care-workers-survey-toll-of-the-pandemic/
“A surprising pandemic side effect: People are more engaged with their health.” Shantanu Nundy & Felicia Hsu, 17 June 2021, https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/17/surprising-pandemic-side-effect-people-more-engaged-with-their-health/
