Typical of many physicians, I have to take turns being on call. This mostly involves taking calls in the evening, at night, and on weekends for my patients, or those in my call group. I belong in a group with 6 other internal medicine doctors. We no longer have to go to the hospital to admit patients, since that is now done by dedicated hospitalists, but may answer calls about patients in our practice that show up in the emergency room, or are in a nursing home and having issues, or have significantly abnormal laboratory results that come back after hours.
My group takes call a week at a time, and the schedule is made each December for the following year. Each person in the call group submits a list of days they do not want to be on call, and the person making the schedule does their best to accommodate everyone. If someone needed to make subsequent changes, they would need to check the schedule and try and find someone to switch, or others would take their call in the event of a personal or family emergency. The call schedule was 12 pages of a printed calendar with the call person written for each day.
Last year the person making our schedules retired and I took over the duty, with the agreement that the schedule would be computer based. I created a Google Calendar, for the call schedule. I assigned each person their own color and created the schedule, after working it out on paper first to make sure I accommodated preferences, made the schedule as fair as possible in terms of amount of call and holiday coverage, and trying to spread out call.
I sent out invitations through Google Calendar. Now everyone in the call group can see their schedule on their computer. They can also use an app on their phone, as shown below. If changes need to be made to the schedule they notify me or our office administrator to make changes to the calendar. Everyone in the group then automatically gets the updated version if they check their calendar.
Recently I added a new twist. Having purchased the Amazon Echo, I added my Google Calendar to the app. Now I can ask Alexa what’s on my schedule, and she will read who is on call!
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Impressive how you use tech to bring everyone into 21st century. Is it still with kicking and screaming? M
Sent from my iPad
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How do you handle holiday call so not everyone takes off at one time?
It’s not really an issue for us because for one thing, our call is pretty easy since we no longer do inpatient work, nor cover nursing homes. Being Jewish, I usually just take the Christmas week. If everyone wants a certain time, I’d suggest drawing straws then rotating each year.