I’ll be candid with you. I like to sit in coffee shops and eat muffins and drink espresso. Or take a walk by the stream near a patient’s home. I like to incorporate these activities into my day. I need to. How can we do the work we do without frequently decompressing and engaging in leisure?
The truth comes out
And I’ll be even more candid. I like to do these activities as part of the work day, outside of the lunch hour. Lunch is for eating. Everyone needs lunch, even individuals working at jobs that are far less emotionally stressful as ours. A leisurely hour of lunch is not enough daily decompression time for a hospice social worker. When we have extra time during the day, or can make extra time, we deserve to use it in positively selfish ways.
In the previous post, we discussed doing paperwork well. Now we’ll talk about how to do it in less time.
Documentation is a time destroyer for hospice social workers. And for social workers with large caseloads, piled up paperwork can become one of the most stressful parts of the job. It’s good to consider ways to reduce the amount of time and energy that paperwork sucks from your life so that you have more time for recreation and more energy for things you actually enjoy doing.
There is no one-size fits all solution, because different hospice social workers have different situations. So here are 5 tricks that you can play with to get your paperwork done in less time.
Trick #1: Document soon and document early
The sooner you do your paperwork, the less time it will take. The more time passes, the more you have to work to recall details. The obvious way to implement this concept is to take notes during your visit, and I’ll discuss how to make this work below. Another way to do documentation “sooner” is to pre-fill. Before you head out for your visits, fill in what you know will be filled in, to include names or record numbers, or the keywords related to topics you know you’ll be addressing. And fill in the rest either during the visit or right after.
Trick #2: Use “Before we get started” questions
We are there to connect and pay attention. To people. Not to our clipboards. We can’t have our faces hidden by paper or laptops while providing our crucially supportive service. So when I see patients I know I’ll be counseling, I sometimes start with a little check-in session that I use to fill in the notes.
“Before we get started, I’d like to just fill in a couple things. How you sleeping? How you eating? Feeling comfortable enough? How’s your mood been?” Asking these questions, I fill in the notes, and after getting that quickly out of the way, “OK. Now how are you doing?” And my attention is on the patient until the visit is over. If there is more to document afterwards, then it’s easy enough to add in.
Trick #3: Use your notes to keep track of tasks you intend to accomplish
Some patients needs logistical support more than they need counselors. Some patients need help with very specific tasks and referrals, and we need to take notes just to keep track of what they need. So if a patient needs help getting his computer fixed, then I’ll look up a resource then and there, call the resource, and take notes of what I just did before going on the the next thing the patient needs. This is a very good reason to take notes during the visit, and one that patients will understand.
Caveat: Don’t take notes during visits with anxious patients
Not every patient will feel comfortable about you taking notes while you’re interacting. Some will worry that you’re casting judgment as you write. So if there’s a challenged relationship with a patient or family member, don’t risk it. Prefill what you can, and fill on the rest after you leave.
Trick #4: Finish notes at nurses’ stations when appropriate
When visiting nursing home patients, it’s good to get to know facility staff on friendly terms, and it’s important to touch base frequently about the patients’ statuses. So one approach is after seeing a patient in a facility, stop by the nurse’s station and ask some standard questions, like about eating and sleeping. Take notes of what they tell you, and finish up your visit notes while you’re at it.
Trick #5: Use dictation
If your organization uses an electronic documentation system, you can dictate notes into your phone while you drive. So you don’t get into an accident and sue me, I’ll advise only doing this with a hands-free setup.
It’s relatively easy to set up your phone so that you simply ask Google or Siri to take a note, and it will. And then you dictate what happened during the visit as you drive, and then copy and paste it into the electronic medical records system your company uses when you have a chance.
When all else fails, pray for an answer
Maybe none of these will save you time. I bet at least one of them can, but everyone’s situation is different. If you struggle with getting paperwork in, open yourself up and ask the question, “How can I get notes done well with less time and energy, so that my time can be freed up for relaxing in the coffee shop and my energy can be freed up for fun and feeling good?
I know a creative social worker who figured out a way to dictate notes even though they still used paper forms. She persuaded her boss to let her use generic communication notes– which only have a single open field instead of all the checkboxes– instead of visit note forms. Then she asked me to make the field fillable on a computer, which is easy enough. Now she dictates her notes into her phone while driving and then copies and pastes them into these new computer-fillable forms and then prints them out to submit.
There is a way. It can’t be all about paperwork. You can’t bring your paperwork home with you. You can’t regularly go in a 4:30 a.m. to get caught up. Failure is not an option.
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