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Dealing with all the subtleties of an emergency medicine schedule by hand can be quite a challenge on a good month. Most months, it’s a hair pulling, energy draining, and utterly time consuming experience.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of moving parts that make any emergency department run like a well-oiled machine. Too many employees on a shift and costs go through the roof. Too few, and chaos ensues.
It’s a delicate balance working through all the shift requirements, requested days off, endorsements requirements, and personal preferences, but someone has to do it, right?
The Good
Emergency medicine scheduling for residents provides an invaluable opportunity for residents to become accustomed to the pace and demand of an emergency environment. More importantly, it gives them exposure to a wide range of diagnostic criteria for various health conditions.
Overall, emergency departments provide invaluable emergency care to patients (and sometimes act as the only primary care patients receive). Scheduling this education and these shifts with a proper rotation of resident medical students along with monitoring physicians and adequate support staff, without stepping on union or accreditation requirements is not nearly as much of a challenge for emergency departments that invest shift scheduling tools that monitor all these things for you.
The Bad
Emergency room wait times throughout the country are on the rise. The new health care law promises an even bigger number of people willing to turn to the emergency room for after-hour health care and emergency issues as they arise.
Using scheduling software enables your scheduling staff and emergency medicine staff to plan accordingly, clears out space in your ED lobbies, and gives patients a better overall experience. Forethought, pre-planning, and organization early on (all areas where scheduling software can help) translates to less chaos and poorer choices later on.
The Ugly
Holiday shifts in the emergency department can get downright ugly with various staff members needing additional time off in order to accommodate family commitments. While the holidays themselves, are actually rarely the issue, keeping up with all the requests and attempts to shift schedules can become an emergency medicine schedule nightmare without shift scheduling tools to keep things straight.
The emergency medicine schedule is a complex puzzle in its own right. But with the right scheduling software, emergency medicine scheduling even in the days and weeks leading up to important holidays (not to mention medical school graduation ceremonies, parties, etc.) is easier than ever before. It even makes it possible for residents and staff members who forgot to plan ahead to make late exchanges with other employees, without wrecking the entire schedule.
The Takeaway
Stop sweating over your emergency medicine schedule month after month and invest in software that does the heavy lifting for you. Your entire department will reduce overtime, stay on target for accreditation requirements, and have fewer errors overall in the schedule and in the care as a result.
Contact ByteBloc today about your emergency medicine scheduling needs.
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