Effective time management is a crucial skill for nurses to possess that can improve their lives and well-being and improve the quality of care they deliver to their patients. However, nurses remain exceptionally busy, thanks to a nursing shortage that is expected to last into 2031. Coupled with increasingly high levels of nurse burnout since 2020, time management skills for nurses have never been more critical.
Fortunately, nurses can utilize many tips and tools to boost their time management abilities. When these tips and tools are followed alongside Primex OneVue Sync™ Synchronized Clocks, time management skills can be further solidified.
Adaptable Nurse Time Management Tips and Tools
- Time Auditing — Feeling overwhelmed with too many responsibilities and too little time? Take two weeks and create a log of everything you do while clocked in. Track patient-facing time, time preparing medications, and time doing non-productive tasks. After the two weeks, analyze what you’ve written and add everything together to determine what precisely is taking up your time. Going forward, use your analysis to cut down on time spent doing nonimportant tasks, making additional time for more essential tasks. Remember to take your time if it’s too overwhelming!
- Cease Multitasking — It’s difficult not to see multitasking listed on every nursing job description. While multitasking may be a must at times, it can lead to tasks not being performed at the optimum efficiency or effectiveness that they can be. If you’re able to take a step back, realize what tasks are being compromised when you’re multitasking, and alter your schedule to separate each task — that could mean a world of difference in your everyday stress levels or task management ability.
- Arrive Early — While not always feasible for everyone, getting to work 10-15 minutes before your shift is scheduled to start could provide you with the extra time necessary to plan out your workday. The extra, pre-shift time could reduce the sense of urgency when clocking in right on time and eliminate any overwhelming feelings of being tasked with many things right at once.
Primex Clocks Can Help You and Your Colleagues Stay on Time
For the above tools and tips to be impactful, your time management improvement journey must start off while working alongside the correct time. That’s where Primex comes in. As a trusted leader in the healthcare solution market, Primex provides guaranteed synchronized time throughout your entire hospital or multibuilding campus on analog or digital clocks.
When everyone within your facility is working alongside the same, synchronous time, discrepancies and misunderstandings surrounding time can be put to an end. Additionally, appointments and procedures can be more apt to start on time, which can have a positive impact on both patient satisfaction and your facility’s bottom line. When patients are happier, that can lead to less burden on your nursing staff, who are most often face-to-face with them.
Nurses and staff members can also utilize the OneVue® software platform, which can help with logging elapsed time during incidents — like code blues with Primex Code Blue Timers. This automated monitoring can take manual logging off their task lists. As a bonus, facility staff members can manage Primex clocks through the web-based software, eliminating trips to server rooms or rooftops.
Nurses are undoubtedly busy with a multitude of tasks, both patient-facing and administrative, during every shift. Time management tools and tips can help them feel less overwhelmed, but only if they’re functioning on the same, synchronous time provided by Primex. Help your nurses optimize their time management with Primex OneVue Sync clocks today by contacting us to get started.