WARD MANAGER - IT'S A JUGGLING ACT!

It's all well and good when someone tells you to be organised, but how can you be when you are overwhelmed with so many jobs to do.  Picture this... you have just enjoyed your week away in the sun and come back to work where there are a few hundred emails waiting for you in your inbox,  staff pounce on you, you have actions from meetings and patients and families have been waiting to speak to you.  Oh and lets not forget the number of Datix that you have to action.  Where to begin!  

 

I remember when I first became a ward manager and was overwhelmed by the amount of responsibilites and duties I had.  Luckily I am a very organised person and love a list... well who doesn't love a list!  

 

I am going to share how I coped with being a new ward manager and how some of the techniques I used in the early days still work for me today.  I am only going to be able to scratch the surface but I hope there will be useful information to get you started.

 

5 TOP TIPS

1. Don't be afraid to delegate

There is no way you will be able to manage all the jobs of a ward manager on your own and therefore you will need to delegate.  By delegating jobs, you are empowering and developing your staff.  I had a team of 12 senior nurses on one of my wards and I split the ward staff into teams with 2 senior nurses leading each team.  They would be responsible for appraisals, one to one's and any other appropriate jobs.  Within the teams the senior nurses would support the junior nurses in undertaking audits, champion roles and link roles.  This in turn developed the junior staff.  I remember when I had recruited a junior sister to support me because it was a massive job managing a 44 bed ward and a team of over 65 staff.  My junior sister was amazing and embraced the role.  I handed over the job of roundings to her and she thrived, she felt important and was gaining confidence and respect from staff.  She also took the lead when we introduced the new Assistant Practitioner roles and all I can say is thank goodness for her because she literally took on every aspect of the project and I am pleased to say it was a huge success.  Remember though, when you delegate you are still accountable and need to offer guidance and support to the staff you have delegated to.  I also remember when I delegated another project to a senior nurse and gave her a lot of responsibility.  I could see that she needed a new challenge and I threw her in at the deep end!  Again this was a success because it freed up my time for other jobs whilst empowering the nurse.  She actually told me that I had "made her care about her job again".  

 

2. Email management

How on earth does someone manage so many emails!  I know when I first started as ward manager I was horrified at the number of emails... nobody prepared me for this!  As more junior nurses we are patient focussed and emails are always an, as and when we get a minute job.  We also never get many emails until we start to become more senior.

 

A good place to start which will reduce the number of emails in your inbox is to create rules for specific emails.  This is something I didn't actually learn about until a few years after becoming a manager.  It is something I still use now and cannot recommend enough.  We all get the usual email circulars hit our inbox on specific days and although you may think "I ignore those emails until I get time to read them" if you add these to other less important emails it can soon add up.  You will find that a lot of emails you receive are in fact for information only and it is these emails that deserve to go straight to the "information" folder to be read later.  In other words, create a rule for specific emails that do not require action and send them straight to that folder - please still remember to read them though!  Another really useful rule is to send all the Datix emails to a folder - THIS IS PURELY JUST TO DECLUTTER YOUR INBOX AND YOU MUST FACTOR IN URGENT TIME TO DEAL WITH THEM.  I used to set aside time every day so that it became a habit!

 

Whenever I return to work after time off I always filter my inbox which helps manage them more quickly.  For example, I always filter to flagged important emails first - although technically with an out of office on there should not really be important emails waiting for you!  My next move is to flick between different filters.  I find the quickest way to reduce the emails is to filter to subject heading first.  There will always be a long email thread for some subjects and most of the time I find that if I go to the most recent email in the thread and quickly scroll down, I can see that this one email contains all the emails that are sitting below it in my inbox! Hit that delete button on all those other emails and you will soon work your way through that inbox.  I do also filter by person as well but this is normally if I have been dealing with something and been waiting a response.  

 

Of course some of you may be thinking how do  I create a rule, or make a folder and even how do I filter?  This is a large area and I am going to cover it in more detail in a later post and video.

3. Staff Support

Staff will want your time not just when you return from leave but at any time.  Show them that you are there for them but also let them know that you have a big workload to get through.  I used to find that when I arrived in the morning staff would be waiting for me and most of the time I hadn't even got changed into my uniform!  I would be thinking...let me at least get changed first!  

 

One thing I have learned, is that although sometimes staff will come to you with what you would deem as a trivial matter, to them it is important.  The biggest tip I have around staff support is to be there for them.  If you are busy just let them know you will be free in an hour or whenever, and then make sure you seek them out.  If you dont seek them out they will either keep badgering you or think you dont care about them.  I have to confess it did take me a long time to realise that sometimes staff just need to offload, cry, shout, reflect or just talk. 

 

One time I was working my way through Datix and a staff member came to the office looking  upset, I asked if they were okay and they started crying.  I thought something really bad had happened and stopped what I was doing and gave them a listening ear.  I could not believe it when they said that their dog had died that morning.  I am not an animal person and remember thinking "its just a dog" and then I quickly realised that actually it may just be a dog to me but it was her pet and she was so upset about it.  I did feel bad thinking like this but it is at that moment that I realised that what's important to staff should be important to me as the manager.  You want your staff to be supported and looked after because they will then work harder, work better and give good patient care, which is what we are all striving for.  

 

Basically what I am trying to say here, is that you must invest time in your staff because they are the people running your wards.

 

 

4. To do list 

Like I said, I love a list, I always feel a real sense of achievement as I cross through the list!  I find it useful reading through my list each morning and then prioritising each job, however throughout the day the list gets longer and by the end of the day my list looks like a lot of scribble. I usually rewrite my list again at the end of each day so it is clear and ready for the next day.  I prefer a handwritten list although many people will use an electronic list and it really is a case of whatever works for you.

 

People work on to do lists in very different ways and of course there is no right or wrong way.  I am now going to talk about what works for me.  Once you start working your way through the list it is important that you don't burden yourself with all the complicated lengthy jobs first, as you may feel like you are not achieving much.  I tend to start with a couple of priority jobs and then do some of the less urgent jobs that I know I can complete quickly.  It is tempting to complete all the quick jobs first but I found that if you do this you then struggle to motivate yourself to start on one of your bigger tasks.  I found myself saying "I will just quickly check my emails, or check the ward is okay", this was me procrastinating and putting off the obvious.  I found that if I quickly check on the ward and staff and let them know that I am going to be busy for the next hour or two and that my door will be closed, I was able to unburden the guilt of being shut away quietly.  I find that if you are honest with staff and maintain an open door policy then when you tell them you are busy, they respect this and will not disturb you.  Sounds obvious, but remember as a ward manager you also have to have visibilty and so it is a juggling act and you need to get the balance right.

5. Look after yourself

Don't try and be a martyr!  It is a big responsibility being ward manager and you are literally pulled in every direction.  Patients need you, staff need you, doctors need you, managers need you...literally everyone wants a piece of you!  You will be spread so thinly that you forget about yourself but guess who else needs you...your family and friends!

 

I used to go to work early, leave late, cover shifts, work a day and then night shift and also go in during the night.  I thought I had to be there to fix things all the time.  What I didnt realise was that I was burning myself out.  Nobody can sustain this level of comittment and that's why you have to bite the bullet and stick to your hours (unless an emergency has come up).  I remember thinking it falls to me as ward manager, I need to be "on call" 24/7 as I am accountable and responsible for the ward.  Remember you have a team of senior nurses who are more than capable of dealing with situations that arise.  That's why they are senior.  It comes back to delegating.  Upskill and empower your staff and they will look after the ward perfectly fine without you!

 

I could talk about the whole well-being and self-care stuff but I think we hear enough about this these days that it is embedded in us.  We know what we have to do and now just need to do it.

Like I said at the beginning, I can only scratch the surface on this topic but hopefully you have found this to be a good starting point.  A lot of the bits I have talked about are not just for new ward managers but also for experienced managers.

 

I hope you found this useful and although a lot of it is quite basic and "that's obvious", I firmly believe that sometimes the "obvious" stuff is what you either don't know or forget!

 

Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any tips to share.