Before we even start work, physicians now have to do setup to the workplace itself. Please see the following example of the physician’s mental bandwidth being occupied by this plethora of administrative tasks. All this is prior to the actual practice of medicine.
- Call clerk upon arrival to hospital and check in with pager number.
- Call hospital operator and secure call room key
- Login with username and password for the computer
- Separate login credentials for the EMR
- Assign myself to Vocera internal medicine team for the day, called Staff Assignment Medicine Consult
- Login to logbook, an online list viewable by our department where we document admits
- Incidentally, the logbook will be phased out and a new logbook with unique URL will be phased in next month
- Login in to Cortext messaging app to open communication for hospital transfers.
If the physician works at other hospitals, this work is multiplied. After the above tasks are done we can start the work of admitting patients. There are studies about burnout from hospital work. Now you can get burned out just from the pre work tasks.
Yes, this sounds like a physician complaining about 1st world problems, but repetitive computer tasks contribute to physician burnout over time. The above example takes time and mental energy from the physician at the beginning of each shift. Now imagine if you have multiple hospitals to work at?
Store the following in notes section of the Phrasefire Platform:
All phone extensions to call staff in the above example, save the above task list, logbook website URL, new logbook URL, Cortext and Vocera information and notes on workflow, call room and workroom locations.
Our platform is free to beta testers.
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www.phrasefire.com