The EFFORT Equation
by Kris Barnsfather, MD
The other night at dinner I was catching up with one of my nephews. He is in his early 20s and will likely be mad at me for sharing this conversation, but it got me going into a connection with my career that hit home. For the sake of his anonymity, we will call him Captain( actually my dog’ s name, but why not?) So, here it goes …
Captain is an introvert, but he isn’ t afraid of people. He’ s within one to two years of starting what we used to call“ a real job.” He is polite, makes eye contact when he speaks to you, but was and still is, fairly lazy. He was the kind of child who hated brushing his teeth or taking a shower due to the energy it required. Many years ago, he came down the stairs to say he’ d showered and washed his hair with only his bangs wet. He wondered how we knew he didn’ t actually shower. He didn’ t see the point of allotting the effort to that instead of what he wanted to do. Recently, I was a repeat offender to not passing a coding audit with the new changes. I apparently didn’ t want to spend my energy on memorizing and adapting the new rules to our OB world( since I still didn’ t pass!). The rules keep changing but they’ ve never changed to adapt to our OB flowsheet. They don’ t make it easy to decide which highrisk chart is able to be a“ 14” and which ones stay a“ 13.” Are prenatal vitamins, iron sulfate or 81 mg aspirin over the counter or are they a prescription? So I have to prescribe it just to make my discussion and management of it count? Sheesh.
How much effort is worth it? That’ s the daily equation we must all compute.
Over time, Captain began to shower more( including washing his hair), brushing his teeth and even adding cologne. I, too, have seen the error of my“ lazy” ways and am trying harder to apply the rules as they are currently written. His efforts are to have more pride in his appearance and assimilate better into society. My efforts are to get paid and out of the doghouse with my employer. I am encouraged more about our family’ s young generation maturing than I am about coding!
At the previously mentioned dinner, I was thinking that I was already married a year when I was Captain’ s current age. He said,“ It is so different now.” He is absolutely right. I began to do what aunts do and started prodding him( don’ t judge me, I hadn’ t met my prodding quota for the
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