Time away from your practice is unavoidable. Vacation, personal obligations, potential prolonged sick days, not to mention continuing education and conferences. A simple plan helps your practice maintain continuity of care while giving you the time off you need. Follow these steps to keep a few days away from turning into extra work when you return.
Step 1: Communicate the absence internally
Perhaps obvious, but your absence should be clearly documented on the schedule and communicated to front desk and clinical staff. When your time away isn’t visible, staff might even assume you’re simply tied up and will be available later.
Furthermore, your team should know whether you’re fully unavailable or reachable only for limited situations. Any exceptions should be specific.
Step 2: Define clinical coverage and escalation
Before you leave, it’s important your team understands which situations require immediate clinical review and who is responsible for handling those. In a multi-provider practice, it may be as simple as assigning another OD. In a solo practice, there will need to be triage criteria in place and follow-ups scheduled for when you’re back.
Step 3: Set refill and follow-up parameters
Refill requests and follow-up questions continue while you’re away, and staff may be unsure whether to proceed or defer without confirmation. It can only help to reaffirm (before leaving) that existing standing orders and refill policies remain in effect, and that any requests falling outside those parameters should be flagged for review on return.
Step 4: Plan for your return
This step often determines whether being away feels manageable or disruptive, and it’s an easy one to handwave. But if no review time is set aside, that necessary work tends to spill into patient time over the next few days, potentially leaving you scrambling.
When possible, it helps to intentionally build in a short window to review messages and touch base with your team. In practice, this often looks like:
- Blocking the first 30 to 60 minutes of the return day for review
- Asking staff to debrief you on unresolved patient issues that were deferred during your absence
Try these steps the next time you’re out of office — Vision Expo in March maybe? See if it doesn’t improve stress levels all around.
