Work Done at Work: How a Practice Extender Can Help You

Quick note for anyone new here: we use the term “practice extender” to describe anyone – any role, any qualification – who works in your practice and gets tasks off your plate.

The list of what they can take on is limited only by your creativity, and by how often you ask yourself: what’s the most effective way, the best way, to get this done?

Here’s what that can actually look like.

Consults and Follow-Up Visits

A practice extender can initiate consults and if you use templates, get the note mostly done, before you walk in the room.

This matters more than it sounds. When you pair a consult note template and patient information sheets for that presentation you are still in control of what is discussed and explained. And that foundational information is already covered so you can focus on what needs you the most: rapport, treatment options and risks/benefits.

For follow-up visits, practice extenders can review and document progress (again, hello templates), and handle next-step education. In my practice, that means scar massage gets explained to each post-op patient every single time – without me having to do it. 👌🏻

Documentation That’s Ready Before You Are

Templates and practice extenders go hand in hand. When these two things work together, your consult, follow-up, and procedure notes can be pre-loaded and waiting before your clinical day even starts.

It is, genuinely, even better than it sounds (and saves me over 4 hours/week).

Results and Patient Communication

I review all results myself. After that, expected or normal results get handed off – I send a task through our EMR and then nurse I work with calls the patient. I keep any unexpected results or those requiring further treatment on my own task list.

Patient phone calls and emails with questions or concerns work the same way. The nurse I work with has a FAQ sheet for common questions and concerns, handles what she can, and books the patient in or flags me when she needs to. She got comfortable doing this autonomously once I got clear on what I actually needed her to prioritize.

Clinical Procedures

This one depends entirely on your practice extender’s qualifications and scope – so worthwhile verifying with their regulatory college before you hand anything off. Some nursing colleges, for example, offer private practice coverage that can extend scope significantly.

In our case, with documented learning plans, that opened the door to having my nurse do trigger finger injections and cryotherapy.

The Operational Stuff That Eats Your Day

Office supplies, researching new tech or suppliers, keeping things running – none of this needs to be on your radar. Give your practice extender the basics, let them do the research, and have them come back with a recommendation.

You do not need to be running to Staples at noon because the printer is out of ink.

Playbooks: The One That Protects You Long Term

We keep living documents in a shared drive that define an extender’s role – updated whenever we add something new. This is her job description, FAQ guide, and training manual all in one.

In his book “Buy Back Your Time” Dan Martell calls these “playbooks” and I think it’s a much more approachable way to think of them than “standard operating procedures”…even though that’s what they are.

If we ever parted ways, the next person could be up to speed fast with a lessened headache on my end.

The Teammate You Didn’t Know You Needed

This one I didn’t underestimate the value of…I honestly didn’t see it coming.

On days I work with a practice extender, the weight of the day is different.

Don’t get me wrong, the hospital nurses are excellent, couldn’t do my job without them.

But the days I’m working with an extender, she helps get patients through and documentation, results, calls, forms, and every other thing that piles up. On days I’m doing that alone, it feels like it’s all on me – because it is.

Having someone else whose goal is also to make sure everything gets done? That changes the day. Sometimes we doctors need to receive the occasional mid-afternoon “we can do this” pep talk.