Quality improvement projects and process improvement initiatives are helpful in moving things forward in your clinical practice. Individually, it is about seeing where you are, implementing change, observing, adjusting, and trying again.
There is always room for improvement, but it all comes down to having a growth mindset, being intentional, reflecting, and choosing what to focus on to continue growing and enhancing improvement at a personal, team, and organizational level.
Join the conversation with your host Dr. Ryan Stegink as he shares more about process changes, workflows, improvement, and progress through the lens of a clinical team level, organization level, and your entire practice.
Tune in!
During this episode, you will learn about;
[00:01] Introduction to the show
[01:52] Today’s focus: Continuous learning, improvement, and changing processes
[02:43] Ryan’s involvement in quality and process improvement initiatives
[04:34] Improving workflow at a personal level
[05:50] How to grow and improve your workflow at a team level
[07:14] Learning from the situation and how Ryan does it at the team level
[08:24] Enhancing improvement at the organization level
[10:05] Aligning your thoughts to feel energized and inspired to grow
[11:09] Ending the show and call to action
Want to get home sooner from clinic or the hospital? With all your notes and charting done, too? Get your FREE PDF guide with 10 tips to maximize your clinical efficiency! https://www.mededwell.com/efficiencyguide/
Notable Quotes
- There is always room for improvement, and it’s all about mindset.
- Always try to be open to input.
- You have to make a decision on what you’re choosing to get involved in
Connect With Dr. Ryan Stegink
Website: https://www.medededwell.com
Get Coaching with Dr. Stegink: https://www.mededwell.com/coaching
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mededwell
Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mededwell
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mededwell1
YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC_6svH-LEDhLjqD7bKa2TSQ
Above are the episode show notes and below is the transcript. Some episode transcripts have been edited more than others, but they are up in the meantime to help those who would rather read and for searchability on the web. Extensive editing has not been prioritized as I seek to both produce regular content and maintain my own wellness. See the website disclaimer if you have questions, since this is all for your education and entertainment only. Enjoy!
Transcript
Have you felt exhausted in medicine? Like your practice is more like a treadmill than truly a calling? Is the charting weighing you down? Working well past your last patient of the day, charting at home, in the evenings and on weekends. The notes and paperwork, lab results, quality metrics, all the things, right?!?
What if I told you there were some ways to make a change, to get more efficient so you can finish work at work and have the margin to intentionally choose thoughts and actions consistent with your values and priorities? You can get my free guide with 10 tips for getting work done at work more efficiently. Get yours today at www.mededwell.com/efficiency
After that, if you know that you want to take a deeper dive into your thoughts and clinical practice, check out MedEdWell coaching with Dr. Stegink. Fight burnout and moral injury. Find fulfillment and create margin by examining your thoughts and actions to take that next step forward from where you are to where you want to be, aligning your actions with your priorities. To find out more and to book a consult, head over to www.mededwell.com/coaching.
You can also find that link in the shownotes of the podcast player you are listening on right now.
And now for the rest of today’s episode.
Thank you so much for joining me here on episode 40 of the MedEdWell podcast. I’m so thankful for all of you who have subscribed shared these episodes and just been taking next steps in your wellness. That’s really why I wanted to start this in the first place was to help others and to help myself as I process through these things and putting this together in episode 39, we talked about batching the fifth in our six part series about process improvement, optimization, workflows, and charting. And today we’ll be kind of cap that off by talking about continuous learning improvement and changing processes. So thus far through my career and medicine, I’ve been involved in a number of quality improvement projects and process improvement initiatives. Some of them have included being a pediatrician, things about newborn follow up appointments about vaccination rates, about developmental screening. And those are a few that for me, have been helpful and have moved things forward in my clinical practice.
And for that of my clinic, that’s about seeing where you are about implementing a change, observing, adjusting, and trying again. So these last six episodes, including today, address various areas of personal productivity in the clinical space, and there’s always room for improvement and especially for me, but a lot of it comes down to having a growth mindset, to being intentional, reflecting and choosing what to focus on. So today, as we look at process changes, workflows improvement, and iterative progress, we’re gonna examine it from three different perspectives personally, at a clinical clinical team level and at an organizational level, or maybe your entire practice. So we’ll need to prioritize what can be implemented and getting stakeholder buy-in. But we will look at these perspectives individually first. So first personally, it’s important to keep a list, whether paper or electronic, some people would say in their brain, but that’s sometimes a little bit leaky for me is I try to hold onto some of these things to consider that I might want to automate or improve how I deal with things.
It could be preference lists, templates, how I batch things. When I sign my orders in the clinical workflows, I have some templated text for certain diagnoses that I’ll put in the assessment and plan to put with those diagnoses. Sometimes as I’m working on them, I will put them in kind of the parking lot in the medical record, where I have certain things that I’m working on, but they’re not totally ready. And that I may flesh out later. Maybe it’s a new treatment option that I wanna look up at the end of the day. And then I’ll just make a quick note of, again, it’s about having a growth mindset and an openness to consider new things. So this is personally at second, it’s important to consider how to continue growing and improving at the clinical team level. So how do we hold onto the, some of those things? It can be helpful to get staff and team input that input that maybe you keep on the board that you huddle around or having a suggestion box
Or encouraging people to submit ideas to clinical leadership that then can be considered by a wider group. They may just be asking someone, whether it’s colleagues, staff, someone in that you work with closely say in the, or what are your preferences what’s your style? How do you want to deal with these certain situations that come up in the processes? It can be having a, a debrief to say, Hey, this situation happened. How is everyone doing? And how can we do things differently? That’s been formalized in medical education and a lot of specialties as part of the M and M or morbidity and mortality reports where you come together to consider, what can we learn from this situation for me, I will do this most often by sitting down with my medical assistant and talking about how did things go yesterday as we consider how we want the next session to go.
When we come up against those similar situations, that might have been difficult and I try to be open to input, it can be really easy to take things personally. And my personal life. It’s sometimes a challenge to receive that in a neutral way, to be able to consider that right, as I’ve been learning more through coach training, some of those things need to be considered. You are able to do it without judgment, so still growing, but yeah. Opportunities to improve and to change processes personally, and clinical team level. But then third, there’s also the organization level. Some of those systems issues, best practices, initiatives that may be outside of your organization, maybe within your organization. So it can be helpful to bring ideas to those who are leading those initiatives, or would have some influence. If you were to start one, you could consider being on a committee or helping to implement some of these things.
And maybe you figure out how you engage for a season, especially if you don’t have protected time and it’s gonna be potential strain on your wellness. You have to make those decisions of what you’re choosing to get involved in, but make sure that if you don’t have protected time, that it is a big passion and you have a margin to do it in all these areas, there can be both aspirational goals, things to push towards and things to make happen. And some of them maybe driven by pragmatism what you can get done. Now, it may be about surveying the stakeholders, seeing what kind of buy-in you’re able to get, but maybe you have to just keep that on your list of ideas and continue networking. It’s all about taking that next step forward. So I want you to consider today when you heard the words process improvement, what do you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, dismissive, maybe take a moment and consider what your real priorities and goals, what they are and how, if you focused on that, how you could align your thoughts, your thoughts about how you might need to grow by keeping that end in mind, how might thinking about those actions you need to take help you feel energized, not overwhelm, maybe inspired, take a moment and reflect on these things, how these last six episodes thinking about charting, about process improvements about communication, batching, delegation, about all these things and how you can take your next
Step forward. Thanks so much for listening today. Take a moment and share this episode with another colleague. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review. You’re looking for a succinct overview of some of my top tips on charting and workflow optimizations. You can get your free guide at MedEdwell.com/efficiency. And if you wanna go deeper, especially looking at how you’re thinking about things and how that might be affecting, how you show up, consider getting a consult at mededwell.com/coaching and see whether getting some coaching might really help you take your next step forward again. Thanks so much for all you do and have a great day.
And now for our important disclaimer:
Dr. Ryan Stegink is a practicing general pediatrician, but the MedEdWell podcast does not reflect the views, opinions, or beliefs of his employer nor affiliated university. Additionally, the MedEdWell podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and should NOT be considered advice regarding financial, legal, student loan, medical or any other specific topic. In such a case, you should seek consultation with a certified professional in that particular area. Again thanks for joining us on the MedEdWell podcast, and have a great day!