Practice Management Alert

Learn some ways to tweak your thinking and take your office culture to a more positive place.

Policies and procedures are crucial for limiting liability and providing guidance when situations sour, but cultivating a supportive, open office culture could be the best way to make everyone feel safe and welcome.

Regardless of the size of your practice, fostering a connected, trusting culture for all employees can help with a multitude of "office" issues, from preventing harassment to reducing turnover to boosting productivity to retaining patients.

Emma Seppala, PhD, science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research in Stanford, California, and Kim Cameron, PhD, professor of management and organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, have researched and published findings on how workplace environments can skew positive. Use these findings to adjust your own practice's culture, if it's lacking, and learn to look at patients in a new light too.

See Colleagues as Friends ... and Patients as People

Your team members probably spend more time with one another than with their families or friends, and maintaining a positive work environment can have a big effect on staff wanting to come to work.

Although you cannot "train" staff to see each other as friends, you can lead by example. Take a genuine interest in team members' lives outside of work. And treat them like friends while you're on the clock: Acknowledge any struggles, bring cookies or a different snack to share, step in to help if a colleague asks.

You can apply these same principles (and train team members to apply these same principles) in interactions with patients. If you run a family practice and parents come in for their own appointments, ask how their kids are doing.

You - or your receptionist, nurse, physician colleagues - don't need to chat so much with patients that you neglect your important work tasks. But try to avoid multitasking as you're asking questions. Look away from your screen and into their eyes.

Paperwork and updating clinical records is onerous, but get on physicians and nurses to save the computer inputs and paperwork until after the conversations. And weigh the pros and cons of an electronic scribe service or app carefully; is the convenience of detailed notes worth patients rolling their eyes through their appointments as the physician repeats everything?

Keep Your Motivations in Sight

Choosing healthcare as a career, especially when you're providing care, is almost always an act of altruism and compassion. But when you and team members are bogged down by the day-to-day grind of patients in and out, paperwork, billing, appeals - and everything else - it's easy to forget that you're working to help patients maintain health.

You can start to reframe your practice culture by adjusting how you think about and evaluate patient issues. You don't need to risk a HIPAA violation by discussing care specifics, but you can reframe your thinking.

For example: Mr. Smith seems to come in more frequently than is strictly necessary, and he tends to throw the schedule off a bit because he wants to keep the conversations going. But you've noticed his step is a little lighter as he leaves the office; even though your practice might not have provided any medical care, you still made a meaningful difference in his well-being.

It may sound a bit kooky, but just thinking about how your office made a difference in his day can jettison any feelings of resentment or frustration. (And how much better will your day - not to mention those of your colleagues and other patients - be if you're feeling like you made a difference instead of falling victim to a time suck?)

Employ the Golden Rule

Remember that a good, happy workplace environment can start with you and the way you approach interactions with colleagues. Champion a culture where employees have genuine respect for one another and gratitude for the work you all share.

When something goes wrong, avoiding lashing out in blame; instead help fix any resulting issues and forgive easily and quickly. These small adjustments in behavior can help build trust and foster integrity - traits welcome in any workplace!