HANDLING A DIFFICULT STAFF MEMBER

Through our on-line magazine, The Practice Solution (http://magazine.thepracticesolution.net/), we survey hundreds of doctors every week. The number one issue that normally comes up by survey that doctors have the most difficulty with is dealing with staff. This includes a wide array of issues from everything involved with finding and hiring the right staff, properly training them and then dealing with them once they are on the job. New clients to Silkin Management Group normally request the most help with this area as well. Previous articles on Silkin Management Group’s various blog sites have discussed different aspects of this management situation.

Today and tomorrow let’s go over some information on difficult staff members.

Today I’ll present an example – one that might sound familiar to you. Take a look and see if anything like this ever happened to you. In a follow up article tomorrow on our blog site silkinmanagementgrp.com I’ll discuss what you do with an example such as this, as well as look at the management systems to have in place so that examples such as this don’t happen in the future. These are the types of things we train our Silkin Management Group clients on.

Here’s the example:
You round the corner and overhear Jessica, your front office employee, saying to Julie, your assistant, “Omigod! You just have to see Brian! He’s sooooo totally hot! I gotta show you his Facebook page!” Then they walk across the office to nearest open computer. You think they are gonna be entering transactions on that screen? Or calling up the recall/reminder list?

Ummm, think again.

If it wasn’t before, it should now be fully in your “management awareness” that you have some staff management issues to handle. It looks like you have a bad apple. Or maybe two. One thing you know is that you pay your staff well, and those paychecks are coming out of your bank account. Another thing you know is that if feels like your blood pressure rises and you get stressed too often during the workday, especially when you see something like this.

What do you do now?

Have you run into anything like this before in your office? If so, take a look at a) how you handled it and more importantly, b) what occurred in the management of your office that allowed such a situation to exist. There are definite management systems that, once put in place, prevent and detect these situations from occurring.

We’ll discuss these more tomorrow in our next blog which you can access here on Feb 11. silkinmanagementgrp.com.

For more information about what we do at Silkin Management Group, how we help clients with staff and other practice management issues, visit our website at: silkinmanagementgroup.com. You can also contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com or call 800-695-0257.

Lyn Ribisi
Silkin Management Group
Appointment Coordinator