In a Hospitalist practice there is one holy grail: The Schedule. It's on our agenda every month, even if there aren't any real issues, it's just kinda cool to complain about the schedule with your colleagues. The physician's schedule doesn't affect me, at least not technically. I don't make the schedule, can't preserve the schedule and I can't even take a shift on the schedule but it still matters to me. We are adding our 13th Hospitalist in March and...we still haven't put him in the schedule.
In fact...while on vacation I typically peruse my emails picking and choosing which ones I want to respond to. There were at least 10 emails regarding what to do about the schedule. I recall one of the last emails from one of the guys was something like "stop emailing me about this until you have 6 kegs and a big white board to write on". That pretty much ended the thread and "Schedule" is back on the agenda.
What I can contribute to is the Call Room Chair conversation. We had to retire our 10 year old used oncology chair. I still remember when that was the only office furniture (other than my old desk) we had. "Someone" broke it on New Year's eve (I didn't respond to that email until New Year's Day). This prompted a call from the President to me.
"We need to put Call Room Chair on the Agenda for this month."
"Really?"
"Ya, and this is what it should say-texture, color and used vs new."
"Really?"
As you can see, I had a huge contribution to this unbelieveably important purchase.
Our role as supportive executives, leaders and administrators comes in many forms. The reality is we desparate need another physician to the join the practice, much like many other practices. The gist of my role in the schedule is Chief Listener when any of the 12 have a need to vent about the workload and how many we "took" last night. What about you? Do you kind of feel helpless when you know you need more physicians to make it all work better? Yet, the unpredictability of medicine and the census makes this process more of an art.
In case you are wondering. Color: Red, Texture: Soft, and New. It's a pretty sweet chair. March Schedule? To Be Determined.