Five Daily Habits to Achieve Your Goals As Physicians

“All I want to do is to go home at a decent hour,” plead Dr. E. Dr. E is a full-time primary care physician who has been in practice for over ten years. She has a family with two children in elementary school. She sees around twenty-two patients a day, four days a week. She usually has a day of administrative duties every week.

Although Dr. E’s patient schedule ends at 4:30 pm, she almost never leaves before 7 pm. She also brings work home to complete. Doing her clinical work makes it difficult for Dr. E to spend more quality time with her children. After the kids go to bed, she finishes her charting at night. She does not have time to get on social media. She does not have time to do other things, other than to wash up, go to bed and to start another day all over, going through the same routine.

Dr. E wants to be more efficient at work so that she can leave on time. She wants to spend time with her family. She feels drained frustrated because she is unable to achieve her goal of completing her charts faster. She chooses not to cut down her official work hours due to financial reasons. So She asks for my help.

As a clinical physician, one of the most common issues of working extra hours is due to patient documentation. Before diving into what techniques to use for charting, it is important to explore the goal and the reason behind the goal. It is important to keep in mind your main goal and its reason throughout the day. The reason is something that gives you a strong motivation to achieve your goal.

The second thing is to allow imperfection. Charting does not have to be perfect. The information of each patient needs to be accurate and pertinent to the main diagnosis. Other than that, it is okay to allow grammatical mistakes and incomplete sentences. Remember what patient documentation is for – it is a tool to communicate with other clinicians about the patient, and about what you plan to do with the patient. Patient documentation also determines the level of visit you are billing. Allow yourself to do your best and imperfection to coexist. When you allow imperfection, you save time from making your documentation error-proof from grammatical mistakes. You are more efficient as you are spending less time on each patient’s clinical chart.

The third habit is to prioritize. Prioritize your day. When you have more than twenty patients on your schedule, your top priority is to see all your patients and take care of their needs. Charting is essential as it is a communication tool. When you are working in the inpatient setting, your priority is still seeing all the patients on your list, and you allow flexibility – for example, you see the critically ill patients before you see the patients on the regular floor. Depending on how your hospital is set up, it may be more efficient for you to see several patients in the same geographic location before sitting down to do their charts. The bottom line is to be clear on your priorities then you can figure out what the best way to operate according to the different work environments.

The fourth habit is self-care. Most of us did not learn that taking care of ourselves is an important thing. You likely have the tendency to take your health granted. It is vital to take good care of yourself so that you have the optimal physical and mental capacity to take care of your patients and your family. Self-care means meeting your own needs and doing things in alignment with your values. Allow yourself to take a break when you are tired. Allow yourself to eat and take bathroom breaks. Allow yourself to have healthy meals and exercise. Allow yourself to get adequate sleep.  Allow yourself time to meditate. These may sound basic, yet many physicians are ignoring them.

The fifth habit is to celebrate. You may not be at your goal yet and it is okay. Enjoy the journey. As you have a clear direction to go, you are tailoring your actions to get there. Celebrate along the way. Celebrate big wins and small wins. Celebrate a mindset shift. Celebrate a milestone achieved. The more you celebrate, the more pleasant energy you generate, and the more efficient you become.

To achieve a goal, be it at work or at home, it is important to be clear on what your goal is. Why do you want that goal? The reason behind it is your motivation to drive you to achieve your goal. Allow imperfection in your work, as long as vital information is preserved. Prioritize your day and plan your day in advance. It is always important to take care of yourself, so that you are in the best physical and mental condition to take care of others. Always remember to celebrate – the more you celebrate, the easier you find things to celebrate, and the more time you get to spend in pleasant emotions.  All these will help you achieve your goal faster.