Oopsie doozie daisy

Sorry, guys. I thought I published a post last week but now can't find it anywhere. Blogger must have gotten hungry and eaten it for lunch.

So today was a Monday with not just a capital M but also a frowny face and a rain cloud. My clinic was just bursting at the seems with really sick and/or complicated and/or challenging patients today. I don't know how it happened, but it was almost more than my little head could take. As such, I'd like to propose a change to the scheduling department.
Normally my day is divided into new and follow-up slots with the new slots being 60 minutes and the follow-ups 30 minutes. Yes, this is a really long doctor appointment (in private practice most people do 15 minutes, 20 minutes tops). No, I don't actually spend that long with people. That's supposed to be time for staffing with the attending and doing lab slips and papers and stuff. But I propose the following... instead of dividing into new vs. old, I'm going to assign slots based on level of dooziness. I will assign every patient a doozie level based on severity of illness, # of medications, other complicating factors, and degree of general expected maintenance. I will structure my schedule to accommodate a variety of doozie factors, with mostly space for low numbers (oh say 0-4), a couple slots for moderate dooziness (maybe 5-8) and a single whoa Nellie doozie spot (9-10). So if you're an 8 but I already have three 6's and a 9 for the day, you'll just have to come the following week. Because if clinic keeps up at this pace for the next 6 weeks, my little head might explode before I graduate. And it would just be a shame after 26 years of school to get this close and not finish because of the rare but documented exploding fellow head syndrome.