Staffing: Knock Tasks Down With the 2-Minute Rule

Near the end of the day, 6 recovery room nurses were standing around the PACU desk chatting it up. Not one of them was doing chart reviews or making follow-up calls or doing, well, anything at all. They were simply biding their time until the shift was over instead of making the most of even the tiniest windows of extra time. How? By following the 2-Minute Rule.

In the world of self-help, the 2-Minute Rule refers to bestselling author (Getting Things Done) David Allen’s philosophy that if a task on your to-do list takes less than 2 minutes to accomplish, you should do it right away and avoid putting it off. Here are just a few of the tasks your staff can accomplish in a mere 120 seconds of downtime.

1Make a single follow-up phone call. With overall patient experience playing a pivotal role for outpatient facilities everywhere, staff should always make follow-up phone calls. This is a perfect task to knock out if you find yourself with 2 minutes to spare. To avoid wasting your time during these rare windows of downtime, make sure to set yourself up for success during the admission process. You should always make it a point to ask patients for the best number where they can be reached on the next business day. Be clear and let them know a nurse will be calling on that number to check up on them. If the patient is a child, ask the parent for their best number, as well as whether they’ll be at work and reachable there.

2Audit a paper medical record. Many are thrown by the word “audit,” a term that conjures up images of long and involved processes. But in this case, audit just means scanning the record to ensure that all the info is present and all signatures are where they should be. If anything is amiss, simply flag the missing info for follow-up — maybe for a future installment of the 2-Minute Rule.

3Complete an electronic health record. As you know, you can’t close EHRs if any parts are incomplete, and incomplete EHRs present a prime opportunity for industrious staff looking to knock out work in short bursts. A good exercise is to go back through an incomplete EHR, see what tasks need to be completed and make it a goal to complete at least one of these records.

4Restock your work area. If you’re efficient and prepared, this should only take you a minute. Here’s how: Throughout your shift, put together a list of supplies that need to be replaced or that will need to be replaced soon (I used to write this list on a paper towel in the OR). Then, when you have 2 minutes, the list is right there at your fingertips and all you have to do is restock the area.

5Enter one patient’s case history in your software system. Believe it or not, this can be done in a short amount of time. Granted, it may take a bit longer than 2 minutes when you start. But the more practice you have, the more expedient the process becomes. (Note: The case history replaces the old surgical log book.)