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As a locum tenens doctor, you're sometimes expected to show up and hit the ground running. As Dr. Tess Washington, a family medicine locum from Los Angeles told Physicians News Network, locum tenens doctors must prepare to "be dropped down from a helicopter on the roof of a hospital with nothing but your stethoscope, white coat, a set of scrubs and your smartphone."
Dr. Washington is speaking hyperbolically, or course, but it is true that employers maintain an expectation that locums are there for one thing: to produce.
That means seeing patients. For a traveling locum, what could be better? But there are things that threaten to derail productivity.
The ModernMedicine Network, a news and educational resource for healthcare professionals, lists administrative burdens as one of the top challenges facing physicians in 2015.
Pushing paperwork for prior authorizations and ICD-10 coding take time, and locums need to work efficiently to stay productive. Thankfully, there are personal productivity tools and tricks that travel quite nicely.
The Pomodoro Technique
Author and entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo developed a time management system that is frequently used by programmers, writers, and anyone needing to extract maximum productivity from their time.
Lifehacker.com has a fantastic primer on the Pomodoro Technique, but it basically breaks work into timed intervals. Cirillo called these short, timed sprints "Pomodoros," named after his tomato-shaped kitchen timer. Today, anyone with a smart phone can simply download a Pomodoro app.
Give this a try
Set a timer for 25 minutes. Allow no distractions during that sprint or Pomodoro, just work on checking things off your to-do list. When the timer goes off, set it for five minutes to use as a break.
Rinse and repeat until you're finished or pulled away for your next patient.
Working in sprints like this keeps you focused. The breaks will help you maintain confidence while offering a contained window for distraction.