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Physician scheduling is something that has to be done and can be a cumbersome job without the right tools. Being the person in charge of scheduling, you might feel a lot of pressure and stress build-up when you don't have an effective shift scheduling process put in place. Having to deal with loads of schedules, timetables, employee requests, and availability calendars that you have to manually manage can be daunting.
If you are able to create an effective scheduling system either by using physician scheduling software or implementing scheduling strategies, you can resolve many of your complex situations and keep your organization moving. Below are some effective strategies to make scheduling easier.
Shift-Based Scheduling
With this type of emergency medicine scheduling system, you have some back-up and will always know who you can call when you need help. With shift-based scheduling, admissions are handled more quickly and have a positive impact on how long patients stay.
Flexible, Staggered Shifts
Staggered shifts allow you to schedule enough physician manpower you will need each day. You are not necessarily varying how many physicians you have come in, but rather how many hours each physician works as you need them. For instance, if you schedule a group with 4 day physicians who each work 12 hours that day, this results in a 48 hour day of fixed manpower. However, on several days, you could have a mismatch in this fixed total where you have too few or too many hours than what you actually need.
Staggered, flexible shifts can help with this as you can schedule doctors on a rotating basis, alternating how many hours each is scheduled to work, with some of your doctors working more than their average hours and some less. If you have an unexpectedly high workload on any given day, all 4 physicians can stay a couple hours extra which provides you with 8 hours of unscheduled doctor manpower without having to call anyone in.
Staff Availability Option
With this shift scheduling option, you give your medical staff the opportunity to communicate the hours they prefer to work. This promotes a cooperative environment that allows you to schedule shifts that are convenient for both you and your staff.
Easy and Accessible Schedule
After you have made the schedule either through a emergency medicine scheduling software or manually, it needs to be easy for your staff to access and view it. If you don't have it in a visible place, it can be too easy for employees to forget to look at it. Handing out hard copies makes it too easy for them to misplace or lose them. This can result in employees showing up to work late or not showing up at all.
The bottom line is, to keep your medical operations running smoothly, you need to have an effective scheduling process. No matter if you decide to schedule manually but using these or some other shift scheduling strategies or you automate the process with software, it results in a more organized environment keeping both your employees and patients happy.
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