As a practice owner, life can be a bit (or a lot) hectic and aggravating (with all the decisions to be made) and tricky (dealing with certain patient/client situations) and demoralizing (when you see your profits plummet at the end of the month and you don’t know why) and even feels like a war zone sometimes (when your staff are “at” each other) and a bit dodgy (when your bank calls to tell you to top up your account).
With all these things swirling around you while you are treating a patient, it can be challenging to be a kind, loving and understanding provider at the same time.
So what is the answer?
You need to organize a Stress Free Zone around you (an “SFZ” as one of our clients now describes his office since we consulted him).
One of the keys to having an SFZ is you must ALLOW yourself to be facilitated by your staff. Some practice owners seem reluctant to give up things that their staff could and should do, which is frustrating to the staff and creates overload on the owner.
Make sure you train your staff to the nth degree on how you want things done, and then delegate everything you possibly can. Most staff WANT to help and do more and take care of you as their boss. When staff are well trained, they don’t come and bother you with “stuff” that they know how to handle. You need to empower them.
Another possible solution: We have advised some of our clients who have a bigger, very busy practice and an overactive personal life to hire a personal assistant for themselves. This relieves stress like you wouldn’t believe and is worth every penny as the client’s production levels increase due to being more focused and freed up from the minutiae. This is a separate position from an Office Manager in a large practice. In a smaller one, this saviour could do double duty and handle both hats.
Of course, learning people management skills, getting trained as an executive, and learning how to manage by statistics to increase your income and put enough in your bank account and your pocket could also be quite useful. We teach exactly those things and much more to our clients for a totally Stress Free Zone where they are IN CONTROL.
FOR HELP WITH CREATING YOUR
OWN STRESS FREE ZONE
Call us at 416-466-6217
for a FREE Practice Assessment!
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