I conducted time studies today in the Dermatology clinic. Back to the old-fashioned Industrial Engineering roots. I haven't had to do time studies since following around lawn mowers at the Disney golf courses at 4 am. It would be convenient if I lived in Atlanta; I bet I could have convinced some GT professor to lend me some freshmen to do this for a class.
This time it just involved standing in a hallway for 5 hours. And what did I learn? If you go to the Derm clinic in the morning you'll spend half your time waiting to see the doctor and your appointment will take about an hour. If you come in the afternoon, you'll be out of there in 30 minutes. Oh, and some of the time when you're waiting your doctor is actually doing something for another patient, but sometimes they are checking the latest World Cup scores on the internet while you just sit and wait. I guess they deserve a break every now and then. I also learned they are going to have a tough time with their implementation since the attending has to see every patient with the resident. (Read Eileen's blog - maybe the wait isn't that bad, you could have a new resident who basically knows nothing.)
There was a highschool student observing in the Derm clinic as well as some med students seeing patients. They all reminded me of Eileen. The poor highschool student didn't know who she was supposed to shadow in the afternoon, and she kept getting left out in the hallway. I pointed her in the direction of the pediatric doc who did a much better job of including her.
