Prioritizing Your Work

Why are priorities so important? Being able to prioritize means you know how to schedule your day so that the most important thing (at the time) gets your full attention. It’s not enough to just react to situations as they arise. This will leave you feeling stressed out! You must be able to look ahead and predict what may happen, and be ready to head off problems before they occur.

WHAT SHOULD YOU PRIORITIZE?

Physical Needs include many of those needs that must be met in order to sustain life. They include:

Oxygen
Water
Food
Elimination

In healthcare, Safety Needs must be met first or at least at the same time as physical needs. Prioritizing safety means you will:

Perform safety checks
Maintain equipment
Remove obstacles and debris
Recommend assistive devices

Vital signs, Intake and Output and Daily Weights should also be prioritized (if ordered for your client).

Start every shift by assessing these things (as applicable to your care plan) on your clients. That way, you’ll be able to determine right away if something is “off” or needs further attention.

HOW SHOULD YOU PRIORITIZE YOUR DAY?

The key to prioritizing your day lies in:

Knowing what is important, and why,
Understanding how long it takes to do the things you need to do,
Responding to emergencies and interruptions without being knocked off track,
Keeping a “to do” list with tasks numbered in order of importance, and
Eliminating things like phone calls, texts, and gossip circles that take your focus off your priorities!

AND, SOME FURTHER SUGGESTIONS:

Try to arrive at work about ten minutes early each day. This will keep you from feeling rushed, and will give you time to sit down and plan out your day according to the needs of your particular clients on that particular day.
Remember, your clients’ needs may change from day to day. So the first thing you should always do is get a report or read the charts to find out what has changed. This will give you the starting point for what is most important.
There will be days when you just can’t get everything done that is on your list. Be sure to let your supervisor know what is being left, and if it is something that MUST be done, be sure to pass it on to the next shift.