Went from mostly GP with a little ER to full time ER pretty fast. The mentorship is key. I wish I'd just started at this place from the beginning tbh. We do internal rounds (topic rounds one week per month, M&M rounds the next week) and a lot of us are pretty motivated folks outside of work.
Knowing your skills set and what you don't know is important, especially with more complicated problems. Never wrong to offer specialty for the clients who need or want it. Don't be afraid to call for help. I have plenty of the local GPs and Urgent cares call me and ask for tips on if they try to handle something themselves. Figure out who the nice specialists are in the area, particularly dental and ophtho folks since that's the shady shenanigans that scares me 🤣
Efficiency is the name of the game. Let your techs have autonomy and don't micromanage them. Spend your time doing doctor things, not tech or assistant things unless the staff truly needs the help
Not trying to be arrogant here but I was arguably the fastest/most efficient doctor on my team, and
every single case of mine walked out the door with a printed record in hand. Can count on 2-3 fingers the times I had to finish a record at home. Also led to me being the highest producer/highest caseload out of 25ish doctors, so if you ever end up on production in an ER setting, it literally pays to be efficient.
If I was not performing an exam/procedure and was not in a room talking with a client, I was sitting at my computer making estimates, whipping out records and dealing with inpatients. That's it. I had techs placing central lines, PICCs, NG tubes, idk what else. If we were short techs I would help, and I know that not all clinics have techs that can do these things/have enough techs, but doctors shouldn't be doing things that a skilled tech is absolutely capable of. I don't think I drew blood or placed a single catheter in my entire time there, rarely helped restrained, controlled how much time I spent in a room, etc and those are the things that some doctors get caught up doing.
If your clinic isn't setting you up for success in this way, your efficiency drops dramatically. And truthfully, if they are that short staffed or the techs are that untrained, they should focus on hiring/training techs instead of another doctor. ER/ICU is not a setting where a very green tech can succeed.
I was the only doctor on a day or night shift more times than I can count, but I was able to see however many cases/inpatients as long as I had enough techs. It wasn't fun, but I definitely left a 40-60 case shift as the only doc on that day with all of my records done (maybe had to stay an hour or two late on those particularly rough days) because I had enough techs with enough skills to handle everything. Tech and assistant support is absolutely the key to ER success. Those that didn't rely on their techs didn't produce as much, stayed late consistently, and were doing records over their weekends consistently.
