Improving Time Management

What? When we started our clinical day on October 21st, the client I was assigned to care for had just left for an angioplasty procedure that would last through most of the morning. While the client was gone, I offered to help the nurses with anything that was within my scope of practice. Once the client returned to the ward, however, I had to catch up with my assessments while taking vital signs and doing vascular checks every 30 minutes for 2 hours, which kept me busy. I tried to complete my charting in between those 30 minutes but whenever the nurses asked for help, I could not say no, thus for this reason, I was not able to finish my charting draft until 1330. Our clinical instructor corrected and added a few things to my draft and we …show more content…
While I have demonstrated organization skills throughout this term, by being thoroughly planning and finishing my preparation assignments in a timely manner, I do believe I need to improve my time-management skills. Thompson (2012) identified three key strategies for nurses to use for time management: plan, anticipate, and delegate. Perhaps, part of delegating in this situation consists of asking a colleague to help with the task if they are not busy and have finished their own charting. In order for me to be successful in many aspects of my life, I need to learn how to say no and delegate where appropriate in a way that I do not feel guilty afterwards. Some tasks usually take longer than anticipated, it is inevitable. It is important that I analyze how realistic I am being with my expectations and ask myself: “how long will it actually take for me to finish charting?”, “how much time left to chart will I have if I take on this additional task?”. I will continue to analyze and learn more about my perception of time when it comes to charting and other manual tasks throughout the rest of the