Effective time management will help you achieve your professional goals and meet your own needs. Managing your time is a necessity in nursing, as there are many demands on your time. Time management will also help you with organizational skills, make you feel like you have more control, and reduce wasted time. The following are some time-management tricks you can incorporate into your work style:

1. Use the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of your effort produces 80% of the results. In other words, 80% of your nursing care will be with 20% (the sickest) of your patients.
2. Keep the change-of-shift report on track. Don’t waste too much time talking about incidental information instead of important facts about the patients.
3. Get organized before the shift stars. Come in early and look through the charts, the new MD orders, the past two shifts’ progress notes, and recent lab results.

Source: Stressed Out About Your First Year of Nursing, HCPro Inc., 2006. For more information on our series of Stressed Out books, visit www.stressedoutnurses.com