Dealing with Covid-19 related issues and regulations in your healthcare practice may have stressed you and your team more than a bit.
In fact, we have found that many practices have lost staff during this whole upheaval and that has only added more onto your plate as you struggle to find a great candidate to replace the person leaving. Staff themselves have varying reactions to all the changes and safety concerns as well, and they too can feel worried.
And then there are your patients who have a variety of good and bad reactions to all your safety precautions.
Packaging all those factors together, you may have found that the love of practicing may have been challenged a bit (for you and your team) and it may be time to put some fun and games back into the mix.
Here are some suitable suggestions we found online to lighten up the mood level in the practice. (And if you have some of your own that you are willing to share, please call or email us them!)
Mood Boosters:
On lunch hour or breaks or at morning huddle, you could get everyone onto their phones looking at comedy sketches on their cell phones and sharing them with everyone. There are a lot of stupid, silly, frivolous videos on YouTube.
Have a share moment in morning huddle or weekly staff meeting where each staff member tells something they are grateful for (rather than things bothering them).
Offer patients a dollar or two dollars off their bill today if they tell you a joke or humorous short story when they arrive at the office. (This one has proven to be a practice builder as the patients go out and tell their friends about this!)
Force yourself to laugh at something, either singly or in a group (funnier in a group). Do it in a big, forced laugh and make it as weird as possible. You will start laughing for real. It works every time.
Look up a funny joke online each day and tell it to every patient you see that day.
Go online and search “laugh tracks” for quite a variety of fun. Unless you are in the deepest of funks, I’m sure you’ll start smiling or maybe even laughing.
If you have a TV screen in your waiting area, you could run videos of old comedies like the Carol Burnett Show, old Saturday Night Live episodes, etc.
Get the team making funny video clips of each other acting out things like being a diva, or a rock star, etc.
Another very common suggestion is to remove all negativity from the practice. No one brings in bad news of any kind. No downers allowed.
While doing the sterilizing or scrubbing of your area of the practice, sing a tune loudly (or in your head if there are patients present).
Go out for a short walk at lunch time and look around at people (obviously with masks and distancing). Look at people’s eyes and see if they are smiling.
Have good, peppy, upbeat music playing softly in the office with no news or other interruptions.
Create Some Ideas
If these suggestions were not working for you, find some that do work for you! Do yourself and those around you a favour by being a mood-booster!
Call us at 416-466-6217 for a FREE Practice Assessment!
