I’ve talked about how I manage myself at home, but really, that is the easy part.  What has been difficult has been managing myself at work.  I am a lung transplant coordinator responsible for taking calls about potential donors, taking patient calls, seeing patients in clinic with the physicians, following up on consult notes, labs, and other testing, refilling medications, obtaining any necessary prior authorizations for medications, completing forms requested by the patients, teaching patients, supporting families, advocating for patients, updating the protocol book, compile and request data, teach healthcare professionals, and document everything I do while maintaining a positive image for myself, my profession, and my organization.  BOY, was that a run-on sentence!

With all the responsibilities that I am given a a transplant coordinator, I needed a system that I could record everything, whether it be for reference, to do, or an appointment to keep.  For 13 years I floundered trying many systems, both electronic and “analog”.  I learned that having the paper in front of me really kept tasks in the forefront, however I didn’t have my schedule in front of me, so I had to use two or more systems.  So in 2014 I bought the Moleskine weekly calendar with the week on one page and a notes page for every week.  This method is just what I’ve been looking for since I started as a transplant coordinator.  So on the weekly pages I listed every lab, test, and dictation I needed to follow-up on the date it was scheduled.  On the notes pages I recorded all of my patient phone calls and calls pertaining to patients.  If I didn’t complete a task or call for that week, I would attach a page flag to alert me and I would leave the flag attached until everything for those two pages were done and complete.  This method worked  very well for my brain and how I think.

The method worked well, but the format did not.  I was finding many weeks I was taping in additional sheets of paper to record phone calls.  I did this a few weeks the previous year, but now it was occurring half the time and it seemed my book was getting fat and not looking clean.

So then I tried the bullet journal format and this certainly works, but I found myself rewriting frequently and things were falling through the cracks.  I love that the bullet journal allowed me to have all the room I needed and not more for each day.  What I didn’t like is I couldn’t see my week at a glance.  I used a traveler’s notebook to keep my bullet journal, reference book, and phone list.  I loved the book and the portability, but it still wasn’t quite right.

Now I brought out my personal size Filofax.  I have six tabs in my Filofax:

• Calendar: yearly and a week on two pages with blank pages inserted between the weeks to record that weeks phone calls
• To Do: List of actions to be completed, but not patient related
• Inpatient Review
• Clinical Review
• Meeting Notes
• Notes for some protocols and practices

What I love about this method is it is a combination of the two methods I tried before.  I still have my weekly calendar to list items that need follow-up, but the blank notes pages allows me to have the pages I need to record calls.  I also keep an extra binder in the office to archive the weekly pages and notes for the long term so my Filofax doesn’t become extremely bulky.

Note:  I would love to show pictures of this system, but the pages are basic pages for weekly planning, To Dos, and blank note paper.  I don’t want to show pictures of the pages in use because of the amount of confidential information.