Manage Your Time

Chapter 2 Manage Your Time




Define your workload 


Plan and prioritise 

Organise your office 


Keep everything you need to do on one list 

Ensure the office environment is in good order 

Control your diary 


Prioritise your ‘to-do’ list 

Don’t keep rewriting your list 

Set yourself time limits 

Take your breaks 

Pencil in your diary 

Book all annual leave in advance 

Keep up with your e-mails 


Delegate your e-mails to someone else in your absence 

File e-mails 

Using e-mails as an essential time management tool 

Cut interruptions 


Ward rounds 

Let your staff know what you are doing in the office 

‘Open door’ policies don’t work 

Don’t waste time with unnecessary reading 


Journal articles 

Hospital newsletter and internal bulletins 

Keep up-to-date with the internet 

Handle meetings effectively 


Don’t allow your clinical expertise to be abused 

Meetings should not be used for disseminating information 

Avoid being kept waiting for appointments or meetings 

Getting the best from meetings 

Chair meetings effectively 


Learn to let go through delegation 


Delegation to health care assistants 

Are you still doing the job you were promoted from? 

Delegating to your deputy 

Delegate effectively 

Be proactive 


Under-promise and over-deliver 

Don’t put things off 

Ask for help 

Keep your paperwork organised 

As mentioned in the previous chapter, putting in long hours at work does not necessarily mean you are good at your job. Being busy does not equate with being efficient and effective. It suggests that you are not in control. In order to manage your time more effectively, you need to have control over choosing what you do and how to do it. You also need to be able to choose what not to do. Spend your time accomplishing things, not just being busy. Invest time in planning, organising, rearranging, sorting and, most important of all, thinking.


This chapter focuses on how to manage your time more effectively and how to achieve a healthy work/life balance in your role.



Define your workload


Most ward managers are employed to work 150 hours per month. It’s worth taking some time to write down all the commitments you currently have in terms of hours per month, as indicated in Table 2.1. If the total hours add up to more than 150, it means that you do not have enough time to complete what is required. This indicates that in order to fulfil your workload, you are working more than 150 hours or not fulfilling your commitments. You may be:



image taking work home


image staying late regularly


image not getting things done.


Table 2.1 Defining your workload in terms of hours per month


























































































Description of task Total hours per month
Meetings
List the meetings you attend, including all one-to-one meetings (if weekly, multiply hours by 4, if quarterly divide hours by 3)		  
  1. e.g. Monthly sisters’ meeting 2 h 2
  2. e.g. Weekly ward team meeting 1 h 4
  3.  
  4.  
  5.  
  6.  
  7.  
  8.  
  9.  
10.  
E-mails, voice-mail and post
How many hours do you need per day for this? 30 mins – 1 hour am, 30 mins pm perhaps? (multiply this by 20 for the monthly figure)		  
Investigating and writing responses to complaints
(allow an average of 10 hours’ work per complaint)		  
Staffing issues
(include appraisals, recruitment, etc.)		  
Compiling the monthly roster  
Risk management and governance issues
(average time spent on serious incident investigations, audits, pressure sore forms, etc.)		  
Teaching
(include preparation time)		  
Own study/course commitments  
Regular admin/secretarial work
(e.g. photocopying)		  
Corporate or university work
(e.g. ‘block’ recruitment, interviewing)		  
Clinical
(time spent on ward as part of clinical shift)		  
Other
(e.g. current project work)		  
1.  
2.  
3.  
4.  
5.  
Total  



Taking work home or staying late regularly?


If you have decided to take work home or stay on late regularly, this is not a sustainable option. You are not looking after yourself. You should be well rested, healthy and have a good work/life balance in order to be effective in your role. Plus, it is unpaid work. In other words, it is not recognised by your organisation or your manager. It is also not appreciated by the patients.



Not getting things done?


If the hours add up to more than 150 and you are not physically working all those hours, it means that some parts of your job are not getting done. You are probably finding that you are continually busy but don’t seem to be getting on top of things. Things either get missed or get left undone.


Problems occur when you do not formally prioritise what gets done and what doesn’t. It is often the case that clinical work takes less priority in order to get through the administrative work. That’s a poor way to manage a ward. If you need to spend less time clinically, then plan it. Don’t allow administrative work and meetings to take over and leave you feeling continually busy and overloaded. Both you and your staff will suffer.



Plan and prioritise


Start by removing or reducing tasks in order to bring the total down to 150 hours. The first place to start is with the meetings. Do you really need to attend all those meetings? Choose the ones that are essential for the welfare of your patients and staff.


Do the same with any project work. Only keep the tasks that are essential. Essential work includes:



image doing the roster


image dealing with complaints


image dealing with incidents


image reading and dealing with e-mail each day


image managing and supporting your staff.


Non-essential work includes:



image some project work


image some corporate work


image teaching externally to the ward.


Once you have worked out your commitments in terms of hours per month (using the prompts in Table 2.1), it is advisable to meet with your line manager to assist you in making the decisions required to reduce the non-clinical work if necessary.


The next step is to realistically identify how much time you have left to devote to clinical work. It may only be 70–80 hours per month. If that is the case, plan to split it into specific blocks of clinical time. This could be something like four half shifts per week. Devote that whole time to clinical work without going off to a meeting or into the office half way through. Let your staff see that you are in control of your work. If you need to keep interrupting your clinical shift to go off to meetings or into the office to catch up on paperwork, it shows that you are not in control of your workload. It is controlling you. Your staff will respect you far more if they see that you are in control of what you do.



Organise your office


Many ward managers have to share their office with others. Some offices double up as changing rooms, coffee rooms and in some cases they are the only place available to meet with relatives. If this is how it is with your office, try and designate at least one third of this room as your personal office space with your desk, computer and chair. Make sure all other chairs, coat hooks, beverages, etc. are kept on the other side of the room. You have the most important job on your ward and it is essential that you have some dedicated office space.



Keep everything you need to do on one list


Write everything down on your list such as phone calls you need to make, messages to get back to people, reports to be written, project work, etc. All papers associated with your list should be filed away on your computer or in the filing cabinet. The list can run into three or four sheets of A4 paper but it doesn’t matter, as long as everything is written down in one place. Keeping one list is simple but effective. It serves to greatly reduce your stress and worry by literally taking things off your mind and putting them down on paper. The basic concept is that you can stay on top and in control of all unfinished work, projects, reports and correspondence.


Get into the habit of noting down everything that requires an action and comes to you via post, e-mail, voice-mail, fax or phone on your central list of things to do. File e-mails and associated attachments on your computer if you need to keep them. Don’t print them out. It’s a waste of time and takes up unnecessary space on your desk or in your filing cabinet.



Set up an efficient filing system


If there are many files in your cabinet left by the previous post holder and you feel you may need to refer to them at some point, then use different types or colour of label for your own files so you can easily distinguish which are your own.


Never keep copies of documents if you can easily access them somewhere else. If you have a copy within your computer files, throw away the hard copy unless you will be referring to it often.



Ensure the office environment is in good order


Keep your office space neat and tidy with no overflowing papers or post-it notes everywhere. Keep all stationery aids in a drawer, e.g. pens, stapler and paper clips. The only things directly on your desk should be your in-tray, computer screen plus keyboard and telephone. It is not always possible, but if you can, keep your printer on a different shelf/desk, preferably within easy reach of where you sit.


The location of your desk is very important. Your computer screen should be facing away from the window. Any glare from the daylight on your screen will cause strain on your eyes and headaches. Plants and photographs serve to make your office a nice place to spend your time but keep them away from your desk. Other personal items such as tea, handbags and umbrellas should be out of sight in a cupboard or drawer. Ensure you have adequate lighting. Order a desk light from your stationery budget. They are not expensive. It makes your office more comfortable and is better for reading. And one last very important tip is to always keep a store of printer cartridges. They tend to run out at the most inconvenient moment.


Having an organised office makes you far more efficient with your time. Less time and effort will be wasted looking for letters, documents and e-mails, and you will be far less likely to forget things.



Control your diary


When you are working a clinical shift, you plan what you are going to do after handover but it often changes due to patient need. You expect that to be the case. As clinicians we are used to continually altering our plans because looking after patients is unpredictable work. However, this approach doesn’t work when dealing with the administrative side of your role. You cannot afford to spend your day reacting to events and constantly being interrupted. The time when you are not directly involved in patient care should be planned.



Prioritise your ‘to-do’ list


The easiest way to plan your administrative work is to prioritise your list of things to do. Grade each task 1–3 in order of importance:



1. Urgent – needs to be done by today.


2. Important – if possible get done today, but can be left until tomorrow.


3. Can be left until next week.


It does not matter whether you have five or 50 tasks, it will make your life easier if you prioritise things. You can then concentrate on completing all those that are graded at priority 1.


It helps if you mark against each priority 1 task approximately how long that task will take. You can see at a glance which tasks will take just a few minutes, such as making a phone call. You can then concentrate on achieving those when you just have an hour or so in the office. Tasks such as reading or writing a report can be left for when you have a longer time slot.



Don’t keep rewriting your list


When you have completed a task, put a line through it rather than just putting a tick against it. This gives a greater sense of achievement. Administrative work does not give the rewards that you get from clinical work.

Related posts:

  1. Manage Difficult Situations
  2. Instigate a Rolling Recruitment Programme
  3. Manage Staff Performance
  4. Look After Yourself

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Jun 15, 2016 | Posted by in NURSING | Comments Off on Manage Your Time

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