Practice Nuggets

Resolving Conflict Utilizing Interest-based Negotiation
If you are truly committed to resolving a conflict, you must start by identifying the interests of the other party. How do you accomplish this? Through empathic listening you can begin to identify needs. This involves active listening (not talking) and trying to “feel” what the other person feels like. With this type of listening, emotions such as frustration, anger, fear of loss of control, etc. can be identified by the patient’s choice of words. These emotions must then be acknowledged. A person’s feelings are acknowledged when you are able to accurately paraphrase them back to the patient. A paraphrase given to a person who is frustrated might be “ I know how frustrated this makes you feel; it drives me crazy as well when an insurance company doesn’t pay my doctors.” Paraphrasing opens the gates of communication since the patient now feels that they have been acknowledged and that you understand their concerns. 


Manage With Compassion
In medical practices compassion should not be too hard to come by. Doctors are healers by definition and providing compassionate care is the product that is sold in their offices. Managing staff with that same degree of compassion is not always a “given”. Frequently we forget about the “people” who we employ. Effective leaders will be very mindful of the emotional needs of all team members. If your staff truly believes that you care about them as people, they will frequently perform their tasks well beyond the minimum standards that have been established for them. Staff caring about the “big picture” is often the result of a boss caring about the non-work related aspects of employee’s lives.

Motivating Staff
What will motivate my staff to work better? Tough question because what motivates one individual may not necessarily motivate another; therefore to suggest one blanket solution (or two or three) may not be worth a dime to you. Take the mystery out of the question. If you want to know what motivates your staff….just talk to them! Get to know them. Ask them about their interests. Don’t guess that they may want tickets to a local pro ballgame only to find out they don’t enjoy sports. Consider conducting a staff “stay survey” and find out what works for them and what doesn’t. For example, a survey question might be, “Do you have fun at work?” “If not, what would you suggest we do to bring more fun into our workplace?” If you have good employees, do what you can (within reason) to not only keep them…but keep them happy! A happy staff is a productive staff.

The Hiring Interview
When hiring a new employee...the face-to-face interview should be an enlightening (not an overwhelming) experience, but understand that you do NOT have to hire someone after only one encounter.  The first interview should be all about discovery.  It should be an exchange of information, an opportunity for you to learn all you can about the applicant and at the same time, inform them of what the job entails as well as the needs of the practice.  Finally it should give both of you a preliminary determination as to whether or not the applicant’s qualities match these needs and if a second interview is, in fact, in order.

Patient Satisfaction Survey
Could you give an injection without using something sharp to puncture the skin? Could you achieve adequate sterilization temperatures without the use of an autoclave? Could you take an x-ray without the use of unexposed film or an x-ray machine? Not likely. Then what makes you think you could effectively monitor the success of your practice without using a Patient Satisfaction Survey? Like all the other “tools” in your practice that have a specific function, so too does this. Its function is to help you keep your finger on the pulse of your practice and determine what it is that makes yours stand out above the others. It will help you define why your patients keep coming back…and why they suddenly leave. It is a gauge that monitors what you are doing right and conversely what changes need to be made. And if you’re not aware of any of the above…the time to start is now. For your complimentary copy of a patient satisfaction survey, request one by clicking here.


Proactive Training
If you think for one minute that cutting back on training time speeds up productivity, forget it!  Merely telling someone how to do a task is not a substitute for teaching them.  There is a method to training which should be (but oft times is not) taken seriously.  It involves demonstrating, clarifying the importance (explaining WHY), encouraging questions, repeating information to make sure they understand, hands on trial time and finally allowing them to go solo.  By doing this you are taking a proactive approach in the training process…a most effective strategy for a successful outcome.   


Marketing to Physician Referrers
Certain general rules apply when marketing to physician referrers. There needs to be an educational component to all communications. Whenever possible, support your clinical claims with study abstracts or other scientific evidence. Physicians generally respond better to face-to-face encounters rather than printed solicitations. Your focus should be to establish the core of your expertise and to relate these skills to the types of patients that the physician sees in his or her practice.

Left Brain/Right Brain Patient Communication 
Did you know that the left side of your brain processes logic and the right side is more "artistic" in nature?  Do you realize that by only providing black and white data in your conversation (much like reading a book), there is a good chance that you are losing the greatest impact of your message?  Next time you make an effort to communicate with your patients, provide the necessary (medical) data, but take it a step further.  Make a point of engaging their right brain for greater influence and potential.  By adding facial expressions, hand gestures and vocal variety, your message could have far greater impact than you think!