Controlling Interruptions
An interruption occurs any time you must stop in the middle of one activity to give attention to something else. Interruptions can be an essential part of your job, or they can be a time waster. An interruption that is more important and urgent than the activity in which you are involved is a positive interruption: it deserves immediate attention. An emergency or crisis, for instance, may cause you to interrupt daily rounds.
Some interruptions interfere with achieving the job and are less important and urgent than current activities. Because the manager’s role has expanded to a broader span of responsibil- ity, more decision making is placed on teams and the staff. When a manager is interrupted to solve problems within the staff nurse’s scope of accountability, the manager should not become responsible for solving the problem. Gently but firmly directing the individual to search for so- lutions will begin to break old patterns of behavior and help develop individual responsibility. Although it is time-consuming in the beginning, this practice eventually reduces the number of unnecessary interruptions.
TIME MANAGEMENT For the past six years, Jane Schumann has been the manager of staff development for three hospitals in a Catholic health care system. After the health care sys- tem suffered record operating losses last fiscal year, many middle management positions were eliminated. Jane was retained, but had several other departments assigned to her. Now Jane is responsible for staff devel- opment, utilization review staff, in-house float pool, night nursing supervisors, agency staffing, coordination of student nurse clinical rotations, and training of all nursing staff for the new hospital information system at four different hospitals.
Jane has been overwhelmed with her new respon- sibilities. Wanting to establish trust and learn more about her staff, Jane has adopted an “open-door pol- icy” resulting in many drop-in visits each day. She has been working much longer hours and most weekends. She has frequently had to fill in for night supervisors, stretching her workday to 18 hours. Her desk is stacked with paperwork and her voice mailbox is full of mes- sages to be returned. On average, she returns 40 of the 60 e-mails received each day.
When Jane comes across information about a time- management seminar, she quickly signs up. At the seminar, Jane learns a number of strategies that she can use.