Begin with the end in mind. This helps you to get the big picture
rather than focusing on specific tasks. One of the problems that you
may have is that you focus on the tasks ahead of you. At the beginning
of your day, you’ll write down specific tasks that you need to
accomplish by the end of your shift. This results in efficiency in our
work. The problem is that with efficiency and tasks, you often don’t
accomplish what you would like to accomplish with your patients.
If a complication occurs and a patient decompensates or something
else happens it’s easy to get distracted and think that you haven’t
done a good job with your patients. If you have a goal that you are
trying to attain that day with your patient, it’s a little bit easier
to know that you cared for your patients the best you can. It’s easier
to hit a goal when you can see it.
Some of you remember birthday parties as a child where you got to
play Pin the Tail on the Donkey. With this activity, someone would put
a blindfold on you, spin you around, and then you would have you try
and put a tail on a donkey. It usually ended up on the donkey’s nose.
So clearly you can see by this illustration that if you can’t see your
goal, it’s pretty hard to be able to achieve it. This is why beginning
the day with the end in mind focuses you on your goal and helps you to
better be able to achieve it.
Every time that you do an action, your action is actually created
twice. The first time is the mental picture before you do the action.
The second time is in the physical form of doing the action. If you
start your day with a clear mental picture of your goal, then by the
end of the day, it’ll be much easier to be able to get there. So if
your goal is that you want your patients to be safe, you want your
patients to be happy, you want your patients to be healing, then it’ll
be easier to get and obtain that goal. If your goal is simply to get
through the day and keep everybody alive, that’s probably what’s going
to happen. You have to be able to see your goal to be able to achieve
your goal. Plan where you want to be at the end of the shift and then
look at the tasks that’ll help you to get there.
Best wishes,
David W. Woodruff, MSN, RN, CNS, CEN
President, Ed4Nurses, Inc.
www.Ed4Nurses.com
PS. Join us for the “Coping with Short-Staffing” webinar on March 20.