Watch your time!

So many reality television shows now - and reality shows now inhabit a huge percentage of our TV time - engage us in competition. Build this! Cook that! Find this faster than the other contestants! And RUN, RUN, RUN while you do it. Slog through the mud! Outlast, outwit, outlandish! But working with speed is a hallmark not only of the world of television, but also the workaday world of you and me.

Professionals in speech-language pathology now find themselves in work environments where, at the interview for a new position, they are told uniformly that the work day is "fast paced", - demanding a lot of focus by the applicant. Where do the fast pace and high productivity demands allow for an additional emphasis on service quality, during the clinical day?

Powerful real-time time management is an indispensable tool for today's clinical professional.  The pressures for maximizing reimbursement and minimizing costs are equally seen across the spectrum of modern healthcare. Yet, quality doesn't have to be sacrificed to meet today's standards for productivity.How can this work?

  The people you are entrusted to serve; they still deserve high quality healthcare. To meet the productivity targets and likewise give persons served the best possible outcomes, keep a few principles in mind:

* Become confident in your clinical skills - no matter where you are in your career, prepare your case work to the best of your ability. If you are a new clinician and continue to receive mentoring : depend on it and use it, without fail. See many, many cases having similar presentations. When you have your own script for the clinical presentations you may see most often in your practice, you will most easily detect clinical cases that are atypical 'outliers' from your script, requiring their special attention.

* Get your work done - when the visit starts, some minutes rightly get used for checking in with the person served. Have communication  skills ready, to signal a transition to the activity you have planned : "what I want to do today...". Remember to keep your client's spirits high with the proper reinforcement schedule. Periodically check in to ask: is this making sense, what we're doing? Do you think you are getting better? Can you practice what we are doing between times we meet? Give the client when attention starts to drift, the best preparatory set. When time approaches to end the session, help the client focus on what has happened and what should come next.

* Manage your non productive time smartly: when you are confident in your clinical skills, and when your visits allow you to get your work done, then you are able to use the remaining time in your workday well. Be on time. Prepare for your day. Communicate with everyone who will impact your clinical work. Between shifts, take good care of yourself physically and mentally. We work hard , and helping others in need to better communicate and swallow - it takes good care, to take good care of the persons served.


In the final analysis,  time is a human Invention. When your client  has a need you can serve, you give them every minute they deserve. Manage this human invention using wisdom, focus and joy for what we are allowed to do.