Misallocation of minutes in the hospital is the primary cause of burnout for hospital employees. 1/

Every minute should benefit a person.

1. The sick person
2. A colleague
3. You
4. Someone who care about you 2/

The chart doesn’t give two shits about you. 3/

Every exchange with a coworker in the hospital should be positive. Supportive. Fun. Warm. Affirming.

You are worth it. You deserve to leave work better than you arrive. 4/

The computer keyboard where you relentlessly pound out your notes never thinks about you when you step away. 5/

Good notes don’t prevent malpractice claims.
Good relationships with patients do. 6/

Spend your time in the room with the sick person.
Repleting the potassium does not refill your tank.
Do it as fast as possible and move on to actual doctoring. 7/

Rounding in the hall is drying out your soul.

You’d be better off draining 100cc of blood onto the floor outside your patient’s room. 8/

I know where you learned it.

I was trained by some doctors who were dead scared of the sick and their sheets and their trashcan and their Bible and their Quarter Pounder wrapper and their Unidentified Family Member. 9/

You are going to have to get comfortable here. This is your place.

Firefighters walk into burning buildings
Cops walk in to houses where drunk couples are fighting
You go in to weird hotel rooms where people are dying. 10/

If you can’t handle it in there, get a pipette and a rat guillotine and get to the lab. You can play any music you like at the bench top. 11/

The rest of us belong in the patients’ rooms. Sometimes crowded, sticky, stinky, and unpredictable.

It’s okay.

It’s where we do our thing. 11/

Recall you write some shitty essay about how bad you wanted to stand there. How you were the best person for the job.

Down at the hedge fund there is a grossly overpaid chump whose spot you took in your class at medical school. 12/

The chart doesn’t care about you.
The hall doesn’t care about you.
You should care enough about you to identify who dies care.

- your patients
- your colleagues
- your coworkers

Allocate your time accordingly. 13/

There is Conservation of Time.

A minute spent on one task cannot be spent on another. 14/

Multitasking is an illusion.
It just means interspersing tasks, not co-completing tasks. 15/

Essential yet unrewarding tasks should be done as fast as possible. 16/

Interpersonal tasks that involve your person or another person’s person should be done slowly with care. Excellence is the goal.

Other tasks need to be done, tolerably. Nothing more. 17/