Time Management: Essential Tips for Nurses

Time is one of the most important resources for nurses, and poor time management can affect your work efficiency very badly. It is thus very necessary to manage your time wisely toward the best outcomes, both of your patients and toward your well-being, since many responsibilities are entailed: from patient care to documentation. Below are some practical tips on how to get through time management in your nursing practice.

Prioritize Your Tasks:

Start your work by determining the priority of the tasks. You should prepare a priority matrix having four boxes: important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, neither urgent nor important. Work on the tasks that are in the first box: important and urgent.

Tip: Keep an active list of your duties and update it as frequently as possible with adjusted priorities throughout your shift.

Use Technology Wisely Use technology to make work easy. Maximize the use of electronic health records in saving time for documentation. Acquaint yourself with the software, and use the templates and shortcuts to make your data entry less tedious.

Tip: You can use apps or timers to set reminders in giving medication or checking on patients, so that nothing is left out.

 Delegate Wisely: Delegating, in part, is the key to managing your workload. Make a note of things that the support staff, such as CNAs and LPNs, can help you with and don't micromanage them while handing them out. This will allow you to focus on stuff only you could do.

Tip: Communicate clearly while delegating tasks and expectations about the completion of the tasks to ensure the tasks are properly done. 4. Develop a Routine Establishing a routine will help you be more organized and productive. At specific times of the day, routines should be built for medication rounds and the documentation required for each patient. It brings a sense of predictability, which in turn reduces stress and increases productivity.

Tip: At the start of every shift, make a rough sketch of a timeline that will help guide your activities over the day.

Minimize Interruptions: A break in work flow almost always guarantees a mistake and interruptions increase that likelihood. Some interruptions can't be avoided, but you can make them as minimal as possible. Signal your coworkers that you're doing focused work so you can also minimize them.

Tip: Use "do not disturb" signals during critical tasks to minimize unnecessary interruptions.

Take Care of Yourself Time management is not only the addition of more to-do things in your schedule; it is more about how you can stay healthy and take care of yourself. Do take breaks at regular intervals for rejuvenation and keep hydrating and nourishing your body. With self-care, you can be assured of keeping yourself energetic and focused during your complete shift. Tip: Build in stretching, deep breaths, or quick snacks into small breaks throughout the day.

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Reflect and Improve At the end of every shift, take a few minutes to reflect upon what worked well and what did not. Such reflective practices will actually help you identify such areas where you can enhance your time management skills. Note: Have a journal to note your progress and strategies that work very well for you for specific tasks.