Reply to Drowning as a working mom--help!

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[quote=Anonymous][I am going to go against the grain here and say that you need to set some limits at work and try to be a little more efficient.  I have a similar schedule where I leave earlier in the workday in order to pick up my kids at school.  I am an MD, but it sounds to me like you are an NP or a social worker.  I did all of the things you are doing for a while, and it’s terrible.  Here are my suggestions:

1). All of your notes should be done at work.  Make up some templates to make it easier, get dragon software and dictate, whatever you need to do.  And B work is fine. No one is ever going to read anything but your assessment and plan, so it isn’t worth it to list out everything you discussed in your HPI.  Just get it done.

2). You are not available for telephone calls after 3:30.  If you negotiated this when you started, then either someone should be covering your patients from 3:30-5:00 or your patients ought to be stable enough to go 1.5 hours without intervention.  People will learn quickly to start calling you earlier in the day if they are going to need something.  Pretend (to yourself) that you are going to another job and you are just not available.

3). If you can, cut back to 95% and leave at 3pm four days a week instead of 3:30.  That way you have time to go home, pee, change clothes, and be in mom mode before you grab the kids.

I also agree with more housekeeping and hiring someone to mow your lawn.

[/quote]

OP again--just wanted to say, thank you so much for this.  One of my MD colleagues has given me similar feedback.  (And you're right, I'm an NP.)  I have had a very hard time letting go of the idea that any and every patient need/issue/question needs to be handled the same day.  I think so much of my current stress level is that feeling that nothing is ever done and that I have to do so much myself (at home and at work).  We have a bare bones clinical staff and everyone is really overworked--so it's hard to trust that things are covered.  But you are right, in the vast majority of cases, it can wait until the next day.  I am also really trying to get more efficient--I use dictation but it sucks and I often have to go back and rewrite so much--but I have been trying to stay off phone/text and email and really grind when I am at work.  I have recently been doing more writing and speaking and I have limited admin time for this--which is usually consumed by patient care/follow up--but am also trying to draw a hard line around that time.  But I really want to keep my workweek to 40-ish hours and don't feel like I owe my employer much more than that![/quote]

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