Learning to let go...

Yesterday was interesting. I had to meet with my teams to review the standards and practices of documentation in a client's file. I had prepared a very upbeat presentation keeping in mind to remind them all that while they were overall getting the essence of what was needed there were areas we needed to tweak. This wasn't new information or new material or new procedures so I was totally unprepared for the response I got. Two of my workers had complete melt downs with tears. I'm ever aware of the pressure we are all under with this new system we're working in now but I had felt that in the last few months we were all getting the hang of it and dealing with the stress pretty well. I was wrong. It was very apparent that these two people were feeling stressed and scared.

The irony of this is that in reality there are maybe one or two in my team that are struggling with the documentation issues and neither of the two who cried were it! The other truth is that both of these people who were overwhelmed by "never feeling they have enough time to finish anything" have some pretty serious time management issues going on. It's their own inability to effectively manage their time that is causing them the most pressure. The others who are having the documentation problem are really struggling because they are just not good writers. They can't seem to formulate clear, concise and cohesive case notes because they just don't know how to write something in that manner.

SO... I spent the rest of the day creating a plan of action to help support them in their work. Here's what I came up with..

1. I gave everyone a clear year long one page planner and asked them to write the require contact information on it - when a face to face visit is required, when a collateral contact is required, when case reviews need to be done, etc.

2. I'm sending two people to "Basic Principle of Care Management" training in November. Sometimes going back to the basics is the best thing.

3. I'm getting hand held recorders for the teams so they can dictate their case notes and then they can be entered by our data entry person. This way those who lack writing skills won't have to stress about it.

4. I've convinced the agency to invest in some lap tops with Internet capability to be loaded with our forms and systems access so that workers can enter assessment, review and service plan information in real time...as they are actually interviewing the clients. I was uber-surprised when the boss said yes!!

Hopefully, all of this will increase our quality in this one area. I think it will. And I think it will go a long way to de-stress some of these people.

Now the time management issue... yeah, that's my next hurdle.