Time Management Tip for Residency and Length of Stay
Saturday, August 30th, 2008You can save yourself and your patients a lot of time if you work on mastering the ability to “get the ball rolling”. Basically, it means anticipating what the next steps are, and facilitating them. Let me give you an example…
Let’s say you are calling a consult. You are post-call and overnight your patient began to experience a change in mental status. Now, you want to call a neuro consult.
Guess what? You will notice that there’s a pattern. When most neurologists come by, they order the same type of stuff when it comes to a change in mental status. They’ll say let’s check a TSH, a B12, a folate, an RPR and a sed rate. Maybe if there’s no recent head CT they’ll suggest that or an MRI. This isn’t a knock on neurologists… it just is what it is.
Anyway, you can get some of that ball rolling by ordering some of those same tests that you know they’re going to order. And this does a couple of things for you… (more…)
