How to Use Therapist Daily Checklists
Mary Kostka (Ohana Occupational Therapy) demonstrates a screen-shared daily checklist used by therapists and support staff to rate sessions (awesome, good, challenges, very hard), log units billed, report complaints, and record end-of-day wellbeing. The checklist helps managers detect patterns of burnout, reassign difficult caseloads, provide feedback, and support remote staff. The video ends with a brief background on Mary and a coaching/consulting offer for pediatric practice owners.
Foreign Mary Koska here. And I just thought I would make this little video to give you a walk through my. My daily checklist that I use to help manage my staff. So I'm going to share my screen and walk you through it. All right, So I do this with all my therapists, my OTS and my CODAs. I just put in their name and what day of the week it is, and their whole schedule is on here. And so they're going to rate every session with how it went. So they just check it off. It's real simple. So awesome would be those amazing sessions with magic moments. Good would be just regular steady progress, a smooth session. Good. But challenges. Overall was really good, but maybe a little glitch. Typically it's maybe with the transition at the end or something. And then very hard are those sessions that just leave you completely wiped out. So maybe there was aggression, no attention, no cooperation, just exhausting. So very easily they can just jot in how many units they build and how their session felt, and then they'll put their total units billed and they'll record that. They put that on their timesheet. And. And the next thing I do is I have them say if they heard any complaints and they have to answer yes or no, and if there is any kind of negativity or complaint from anybody, then you know where they heard it, what was said. And this way it's almost always never, but every once in a while they'll just be a little bit of a. I don't know, maybe a parent said, oh, it's really slippery outside, or something like that. You know, just anything. Something like that would. We would address right away, but just anything. So, just so that I have a pulse on if there's anything that needs to be changed or fixed. And. And this started with. I had. I had somebody who was like saying that there were a bunch of complaints and I hadn't heard any complaints. I thought it was very odd. And, and. And there hadn't really been. She was just. She was a staff that ended up leaving. And I didn't have to let her go, but I probably would have. But it was just something she was saying. And I thought, well, I don't really have a system in place to know if there are. So I developed a system pain before systems figure things out. And then I really like to say, like, have them say how they're feeling at the end of the day, if they're feeling energized, happy, good, tired, completely wiped out. A lot of times they're just like happy, good, tired, you know, they had a busy day, but they're, they're feeling pretty good. I really look closely to see, you know, if they're tired every single day or if they're having multiple days that they're wiped out or if they've had multiple very hard sessions. I really look closely at that because I do not want any of my staff to get burned out. And sometimes it's a matter of that. Maybe I have one therapist that has like all the hard kids or maybe they're hard kids are on the same day. I can very quickly assess the situation and see if there's any trends, you know, might just be a fluke, tough day one day. But if I see any kind of pattern, like two or three in a row, then I'm, I'm right in there trying to figure it out and seeing how, how we can make things better for them. I also have a place where they can, if they have a question for me. So there's lots of different ways that I use this. I use it for feedback too. So like, maybe they had like just an amazing day. They were all awesome or good and, and a really full day and they felt good at the end of the day. So I might snap a picture of it and text it back to them and say, hey, looks like you had a really amazing day. Proud of you, Something like that. Or maybe they had a really hard session and if they didn't put a note to say what happened, I might just check in, say s you had a hard session. Anything I can do to help. But basically I sometimes like, if I'm gone, if I'm out of town or, or you know, some reason I'm, I'm not around, this is just a really great way for me to catch up and be able to look back through and then see like, oh yeah, everything went pretty smooth while I was gone or oh, I gotta address this. And for my remote staff, I have actually every single person has some kind of sheet. So for like our support staff, it'll have like different tasks that they got done, but the same kind of thing at the bottom. And so we have it. You can do it like on Google form or chat form, but for remote staff, they just send it in. But anyway, that is basically it. I really, I really love it because I feel like I can jump in and be aware before things get really bad. It really got initiated from a situation where I had one therapist that was getting really, really burnt out and I realized that she all that she had all the hardest kids and some of them on the same day. So we had to fix that, spread that around anyway. So let's see. I'm going to stop share and and basically I'm. I'm just hoping that you found this checklist really helpful. I've had one person also say they were going to use it like with students, which is I think a great idea. I know many of you want to make 2023 with like no burnout, like really take care of your staff. And I really, I think that's wonderful. That's how I feel as well. But I know a lot of you also are looking at you'd like to really grow and have just massive growth. So for those that don't know that I help with that. I am just so you know a little about me. I I own a private practice, Ohana Occupational Therapy, but I'm also part of some very high level masterminds. I have my own mastermind with a couple other o Raina and Kim. We do. I do coaching individually, we do coaching together. We do retreats for OT business owners. I help with documentation systems to get them really efficient. Just in during the pandemic in the last two years I've more than doubled my practice, more than doubled our visits just because we have so many great systems in place. It's been pretty easy to do. So if you happen to be someone who doesn't have a game plan for 2020 to just make it the very best year ever and so that you feel rested and rejuvenated and just have an amazing year, then I would love to speak with you for about 20 minutes and just talk about your goals and figure out the next best steps for you to focus on. And I decided that I'd be willing to just get on a zoom call with a few of you pediatric practice owners who just really want to make 2023 the best year.
