Staying Organized: The Key to Preventing Burnout
Caregivers have a lot on their hands, especially if they have many patients assigned to them. A simple delay because they were unorganized can easily cause stress and tasks to pile up, hours of overtime, and fatigue. Needing to dig around in a stack of papers to find a particular form, sorting pills repeatedly, getting supplies in the middle of a care procedure, and going back and forth to finish a task are just a few common scenarios wherein a caregiver has failed to stay organized.
Organizational skills are highly important in caregiving, helping to prevent too much stress at work. What are organizational skills? These are strategies you use to be able to do the most tasks using the least amount of time, energy, and resources. It means saving time and feeling less tired at the end of the day. Organizational skills mainly involve three things: planning, prioritizing (knowing which are the most important tasks), and organizing your workplace.
1. Planning
Planning means having a schedule to follow so you do not miss relevant tasks. Arrive a bit earlier to work and make a to-do list. Keeping a small notebook and a pen, or using your mobile phone, will make this part easier. Keep a calendar of important weekly or monthly schedules. As you go about your day and you need to take note of something, write it down or save a reminder on your phone, right away.
Also, before any care procedure, you should know which supplies and equipment are needed and gather them beforehand, saving trips to the supply room.
2. Prioritizing
Knowing which tasks are priorities will help you use your time and attention wisely and make sure that these responsibilities are performed and not forgotten. Imagine failing to remember a patient’s appointment with the doctor: when the transport service arrives, the patient’s incontinence pads have not been changed yet and the lab results they need to take with them are missing. This mistake will cause unnecessary and significant delays.
3. Organizing the workplace
This is about keeping the work environment clean and removing clutter. Clean up after every care procedure and do not wait to return equipment. Always keep equipment and supplies in the same place to prevent wasting time looking for them. Replenish supplies before they run out. Dispose of any trash immediately.
If it is within your scope of your responsibility to keep the patient’s medications, you may use a pill box to store and categorize the medications and to keep partitions filled for every scheduled intake, morning and night.
Arrange all important documents in a binder and consistently keep it in an accessible place. This will be helpful to prevent going through the patient’s belongings to look for a particular lab result.
Have a small, handy bag to carry around, where you can keep things that you commonly use, such as a small notebook, pens, tape, and scissors. Choose a bag with slots in it so that you can keep the same items in the same place at all times.
Use a tray for carrying several things at once to avoid running back to get things needed for a care procedure. Use a trolley to transport heavier things, and label items accordingly with the patient's name and room number.
Being organized is the key to being less stressed at work and finishing tasks on time. The caregiver must make it a habit to develop an effective way of doing things to save them time, energy, and resources.
