An interesting question

I received an interesting question from a dentist. This dentist feels burnt out and is wondering how they can work with less stress and more efficiently.

One of the tasks they are trying to delegate to their DA is the clinical notes. They are running into problems because:

"I have templates and I let my DAs write part of the notes, but they don't use the templates…”

My reply ran as follows:

“Once you decide you want things done in a certain way, you must stick to it. If you want the nurses to use the templates then they must use them. In my office we had regular staff meetings where we discussed how things should be done. Once we decided to do something in a certain way then it had to be done in that way. I would not accept any compromise. If a nurse tried to do something in a different way I would stop her and get her to do it the right way.”

The fact that you do not accept deviation from agreed procedures reduces stress and makes you more efficient. My nurses all knew that once we agreed something in a meeting, we implemented it 100% starting immediately.

You are making a rod for your back if you ask nurses to use templates, as in the example above, then don’t enforce that decision.

By the way, once they get into it, working in this way is less stressful for the nurses. They know exactly what they are required to do.