Emergency room doctors work very long hours, have to attend to numerous patients, and have to work quickly, yet efficiently in order to provide their patients with the medical care that they require. Given the demands of the emergency room doctor, it is not unusual for these doctors to become burnt out and unhappy with their work environment, which can greatly impact their performance, jeopardizing the health of their patients.
Why is shift scheduling a challenge in emergency rooms? Here is a look at some of the biggest challenges in emergency medicine scheduling.
Scheduling Challenges
It is not unusual for emergency room doctors to work for 27 hours or longer. These long hours, accompanied with the high demands that emergency room doctors have to deal with, ER physicians are often overtired and burned out. Not only does this have a negative impact on their quality of life, but it can also directly impact their ability to provide their patients with proper care.
What are some of the biggest challenges that are experienced in scheduling ER doctors? Here are three of the biggest causes of scheduling issues:
Influx of patients
The number of people who rely on the emergency room for medical care is on the rise. Instead of seeing their primary care physicians, many people believe that going into the emergency room when they require medical care is quicker than scheduling an appointment with their primary care physician. This leads to a greater demand for doctors in the ER.
Schedule changes and requests
ER doctors often have to request off or need to make changes to their schedules. Often, this requires the schedule to be rewritten at the last minute, which makes it difficult to properly schedule doctors so that they can avoid long shifts and burnout.
It’s time-consuming
Without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges when creating schedules for ER physicians is how time consuming the process is. Between creating a tentative schedule, assessing it to ensure it is accurate, making necessary modifications, it can be virtually impossible to create an adequate schedule.
Thankfully, there is a way to avoid burned out and unsatisfied emergency room doctors – by automating physician scheduling with scheduling software.
The Benefits of Automating ER Physician Scheduling
Emergency room physician scheduling software can eliminate the aforementioned scheduling challenges. Not only does it make it easier to create schedules, but it also avoids doctor burnout and improves the care that patients receive. Some of the biggest benefits of automating emergency room scheduling include:
Simplifies the scheduling process
When schedules are automated, they can easily be customized to meet the needs of the physicians.
Easy access
Those who create the schedules, doctors and other staff can easily access them. When schedules are automated, they can be posted online, which means that physicians and other staff can simply download their schedules and view them from their computer, tablet or smartphone.
Increases patient care
Since doctors and other ER staff are less likely to get burned out when their schedules are properly written and successfully managed, patients receive better care.
Do you create schedules for emergency rooms? If so, what is your stance on automating the scheduling process?
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