How Do Busy Physicians Finish Their Work On Time

Many physicians who are full-time in clinical medicine go home at least 2-3 hours after they see their last patients. Many are working on completing the patient documentation, returning phone calls, ordering tests, or a combination of all of the above. Many physicians are also bringing work home after they leave 2-3 hours later from work.

When I was a fellow and became a new attending physician, I thought that was the normal pattern. Physicians were supposed to work long hours. It was a given. I thought I was prepared for it. Little did I realize that the long hours of work became the source of my stress, frustration and anger. It built up so much inside me that I gradually lost the joy I had in taking care of patients. It became a survival mode of operation, merely to survive another day of hard work. Then I asked myself, what was the point?

Exactly. What is the point?

Think about why you decided to be a physician, why you chose your specialty, and why you chose your current job. You may be an employed physician or your own boss. Be clear on this.

Do you want to go home on time with your work completed? If your answer is no, this may not be something helpful for you to read. Think about why you want to go home on time. Do you want to spend the non-work hours with your family, or do something fun, or simply relax?

To be able to go home on time from work, the most important thing is not to master the skills to be efficient. It is to be clear on why you want to go home on time. Imagine that you are already going home on time. How does that feel? What emotions does it generate in you?

Now that you are clear on why you want to go home on time, the next step is to set a goal. What time do you want to go home? Do not only think about what time you are capable of leaving from work. Think of the time you ideally want to leave. It may seem impossible for it to happen for the time being, but imagine it. Dream big.

After you decided on the time you want to leave from work, believe that you can do it. Let your mind be  open to the possibility that you can achieve this seemingly impossible goal.

Then comes the commitment. Commit yourself to achieving the goal you set. Do not rush into thinking about how you are going to do this. Renew your commitment every day. Remind yourself of the commitment throughout the day.

When you understand why you want to go home from work on time, what is the ideal time to go home, believe in yourself to achieve it, and commit yourself to achieving it, you are already more than half way there. The fuel that drives your action to achieve your goal stems from the why, the goal, the belief and the commitment. The fuel is best coming from you thinking as if you have already achieved your goal. The fuel is your emotion. How would you feel when you are leaving work on time every day?

Decide on the emotions you want to fuel your day. The actual execution part is more sustainable and more efficient if you choose pleasant emotions to be your fuel.

Analyze your work day. What are you spending the most time on? Most clinical physicians spend the majority of their time on patient documentation. Examine the way you are charting. Is there any way you can cut down on the charting time?

Are you seeing a patient and completing the chart before seeing another patient? If you wait until the end of the day to finish many of your charts, you are likely spending two to three times longer to complete each chart. Are you including more information than needed in your patient documentation? Are you treating charting as if you are writing an English essay where you proofread and correct every simple grammatical error? This is the time to let yourself go – it is okay not to have a perfect-looking chart.

Always watch your time. If you are scheduled 15 minutes to see a patient, that means that you are to complete the face-to-face encounter, finish the patient’s note, and order the necessary tests all in those precious 15 minutes. If it is a patient with more complicated problems, that is not the time to have a prolonged casual conversation with that patient.

Dismantle the belief that you can multitask. No one can. Multitask is simply quickly switching from one thing to another. If you decide to do several things, it is best to complete one thing at a time.

The easiest way to leave work on time is to decrease your patient workload. While this is unlikely possible especially for employed physicians, I can imagine that many private practice owners will also prefer not to cut down their patient load and decrease their income.

While you set the ideal goal time to leave work, it is helpful to work toward a smaller goal first. For example, if you are going home around 7:30 pm every day, set a goal to go home by 7 pm instead, with your work done. By the time that you are consistently going home by 7 pm every day, set another short-term goal to go home by 6:30 pm. Do this repeatedly until you get to your goal time, 5 pm, for example.

Keep at it, do not give up. There is always room for improvement. There is always something new you can try. Eventually you will succeed. Having gone through this journey myself, I have grown a lot. From going home past 7 pm and bringing work home to going home by 5 pm with all my work done is not aan easy feat. It also did not happen overnight. Your reason for going home on time is the most important driving force, as thinking about it generates the emotion you need to drive your day. Set your goal, believe you can do it. Commit yourself to doing it. Then take action. Eventually you will look back and say to yourself that you can never go back to the way things were. You cannot imagine how you could be working those extra hours all that time. At that point, you have become a person with a new identity. You are a physician who is leaving work on time.