Background: As physicians, it is essential to improve time management skills to promote future career success. After medical school, a first-year resident is faced with balancing the multiple demands of their new profession. A previous survey showed that task prioritization and time management were considered a problematic area for new doctors. Unfortunately, these skills are not routinely taught during medical school training. However, it has been postulated that the Covey’s Time Management Matrix Technique (TMMT) could be a useful strategy for physicians to efficiently prioritize tasks.
Purpose: Using the Covey’s TMMT as a model, a time management workshop was developed for pediatric and internal medicine sub-internship students. Our objectives were to increase students’ confidence regarding time management skills and provide strategies that can be implemented into clinical practice.
Description: Participants included Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine students rotating on an inpatient Pediatric or Internal Medicine Sub-internship for the 2020-2021 academic year. Prior to the workshop, students completed a survey to assess their confidence in time management skills. The workshop was held via Zoom and consisted of three sections: 1. Self-directed learning on Covey’s TMMT and development of an individualized matrix 2. Specialty-specific patient cases with group discussions about how to prioritize tasks 3. Group exercise on triaging patient-related messages from nursing to practice prioritization Students then completed a survey immediately after the workshop and after completion of their sub-internship. Preliminary data showed that most workshop participants (82%) strongly agreed or agreed that the workshop improved their ability to manage time effectively and prioritize tasks on a clinical rotation. The percentage of students that reported feeling confident or very confident in time management skills increased from 30% (6) to 77% (17) after the workshop. However, there was not a statistically significant difference between pre-workshop and post-workshop mean confidence scores (N=20 and 22 respectively).
Conclusions: The majority of medical education focuses on learning about the conditions patients have but little time on the skills of time management and task prioritization needed to care for patients. There are also no known effective teaching strategies to develop these skills. The Time Management and Task Prioritization workshop using Covey’s TMMT provides one type of teaching strategy for students. The data was not statistically significant possibly due to a small number of participants in this study. More research is required to evaluate whether the perceived increase in confidence in these skills translates to clinical performance.