The doctor work schedule is a phrase that by itself could change the mood of any meeting, both for doctors and schedulers. Work schedules can impact time for family, vacation planning, and personal hobbies, not to mention contribute to physician burnout. Therefore, you need to handle this task carefully to avoid tricky situations.
To complicate matters, the physician schedule impacts the coverage for providing the right patient care. Physician scheduling software basically offers a valuable return on your investment because it allows you to generate fair schedules for your doctors, who can then turn around and focus on enhancing and maintaining a high level of care for their patients. This is why it's so important to choose your scheduling software wisely.
Here are some tips to choose the best ER physician scheduling software for your emergency department.
1. Learn From Past Scheduling Challenges
Many people begin each year as a new beginning for setting new goals and eliminating bad habits as well as developing better ones. Being the person in charge of the scheduling process, it provides you with a fresh start as well as your doctors to learn from past scheduling challenges.
Think back to conflicts you've had because a physician was put on the schedule to work for several weekends in a row and it caused them to miss out on their child's football game, for example. Or another doctor put in a request for a two-week vacation, but didn't have the time accrued in order to cover it.
Nobody wants to relive problems like these again, so some things you can do include: • Listen to your doctors
• Invest your time wisely
• Address your scheduling obstacles 2. Understand Your Scheduling Constraints Doctors might have a whole list of reasons why the existing scheduling process is unfair, however, it's you that's going to spend hours trying to organize and distribute a schedule that works for everyone. But, your list is likely to be much longer than your doctors and you should list them out.
As you're listing out your concerns, ask yourself some questions, including: • When it comes to creating the schedule, what's the most time-consuming?
• Should I create a new scheduling system to enhance efficiency?
• Are there changes I'll have to make in order to simplify the task?
Coming up with a schedule that's fair for all doctors should be most important and if you focus on that alone, it can help you avoid many issues they typically report about their schedules.
3. Read Through the testimonials
Read what physicians nationwide are saying about emergency medicine software. How has the software improved the scheduling process? Has it helped with physician burnout or unfair scheduling? These are just a couple things to consider. Testimonials can help you decide whether or not the shift scheduling software is worth the investment.
4. Look at the Software's Help Features, Videos, and Tutorials
This is an important step because you will have to learn how to use the software effectively so you can work it into your scheduling process. During training sessions, ask as many questions as you feel necessary and reach out to the support team if you have any concerns or other questions. While you won't absorb every last detail right away during the training or while watching videos or tutorials, you should give yourself time to really digest what you learn. 5. Take the Demo After you've been completely trained on the software, it's time to take a demo. While the effect won't be immediate, you might notice you're spending less time each month building the schedule. Then you'll realize you've made a great decision. Plus, you'll receive fewer complaints from doctors.
To really see how the new software has improved your emergency medicine scheduling process, look back to your original goals (and/or checklist) and determine if you're experiencing any of the same challenges you were before.
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