24 /7: You Da Man, and It's Not So Great Anymore

Your career has to be something that you not only enjoy doing for 70 percent of your conscious state, but also something you feel you can excel at and, in short, is gratifying to you on a professional level.  However, you’d like to have a life outside of the job and when you accepted this position, you thought it would be no big deal to be on call.  After all, it is a huge responsibility and everyone is counting on you as the resident expert.  Now, you have realized that you are the resident expert and everyone is counting on you “24/7”!  Not quite as great as you first imagined! The solution?  Well, in some circumstances, it is simply a matter of enabling your team.  Enabling means training your team and/or making materials available to them in order for them to proactively solve problems without having to contact you.

So, let’s first begin by evaluating why you need to be on call 24/7.  There are a couple of steps in this evaluation. The first is to begin tracking the frequency of the pages and calls.  Chart days, time, duration, outcomes and most of all, talk to the people who are paging you. Determine what they feel may be repetitive problems, or any other applicable feedback.  You may find that there is a pattern to when you are needed (i…