Opening a clinic is for many medical professionals, the culmination of a long journey. Many professionals work for years or decades to acquire the technical skills and artistic acumen to be successful. And as many feel they need to run an effective medical practice, it is like growing a business. But this is something that many medical professionals in the UK seldom focus on because they are there to do a job.
However, it’s important to remember that growing an effective medical practice, even when you’ve been working in one for years, is about understanding what you are facing. It’s important to keep the patient levels manageable but also realise that people need the appropriate help where possible. What does any medical professional need to grow effectively?
Growing Any Practice Demands Confidence
You may not think so, but the mindset is pivotal. Any medical professional that’s operating within the NHS may not be looking to grow in a literal sense, but ensuring that they are providing an efficient service, requires the leader to operate with the right mindset. Therefore, it means dealing with perceived limitations.
For example, if there’s a lack of opportunities for storing physical supplies, having the mental fortitude to look for storage facilities like a medical fridge and venture beyond the typical aspects is a little thing, but so important. We can rely on preferred suppliers, but if they are not helping us to achieve our goals, we should have the confidence to look elsewhere.
You may think that your hands are tied and there are things out of reach, but when you are viewing your problems as limitations, this is what’s going to stop you from growing in the right ways.
Shifting Your Mindset
If you are in charge of a business like a medical practice regardless of the external circumstances, it is always the owner that has to admit the issues. While 20% of the issues may boil down to inefficient mechanics of running this practice, the rest boils down to your psychology. It’s something that many practice owners don’t consider; that their fears and limitations are hindering their growth.
Lots of people believe that, in order to facilitate change, they’ve got to alter their strategies, but the reality is that before you do this, you’ve got to change your attitude to the situation. Because many people looking to grow a business will say that they “tried everything,” but the reality is that they believe that growth is a limited entity. But when you start to become aware of your own limiting beliefs, this is when you can start to shed those confines.
Because if we’ve been running a practice for so long we can be used to operating in a certain way, but this is directly related to the reasons why nothing is changing for the better. You have to make the decision to change how you run the practice and realise that everybody deserves more. Because, before you start to make innovations you’ve got to change how you are going to think about the process.
Understand Who Your Patients Are
While running any form of medical practice can make you think that you’ve got to turn your patient into a customer, this can benefit you but is quite an Americanized form of running a medical practice. The fact is that if you want to have a better relationship with your patients, you’ve got to start innovating and promoting appropriately, which does demand some form of business acumen. Innovation essentially means finding a better way to meet your patients’ needs.
Patients will come to you but you have to learn that it’s not about quick turnarounds, but it’s about ensuring that you give them the solutions they need the first time. When someone comes in with a long-standing health problem and they’ve been returning to the doctor time after time, they clearly haven’t had their needs met. As easy as it is to medicate, this might be putting a bandage over the wounds and not addressing the deep-rooted issues. Thankfully, there are many doctors that are now looking towards more holistic approaches.
For example, in the field of asthma, there are specialists who are looking beyond medications and into alternative methods such as Buteyko breathing. And this is one method that, while it needs to be approved, it’s nice to see when medical professionals are looking beyond what they learned in education. And this means that when you start to treat your patient as someone who needs to be dealt with effectively rather than placated, this is going to create an effective culture where you can provide more value. In essence, this will leave the customer satisfied.
Asking Yourself What You Really Want
It’s so crucial for you to decide what is most important to you. Many medical professionals go into the industry with the hope of helping other human beings. But it’s important to ask yourself what you really want and what motivates you.
When it comes to running a medical practice it’s so easy to get caught up in the conveyor belt approach, especially right now, but if you want to be more fulfilled, you’ve got to ask yourself what you really want in terms of the achievements you have already made up to this point and can make real lasting change for years to come.
Because anybody can find themselves on the treadmill of life because they are used to a certain lifestyle. And it’s important that when you want to grow a medical practice, you may have to treat it like a business in some respects, but you have to make sure that you are fulfilling your personal and professional needs.
In order to have an effective medical practice, it all stems from you. We can talk about improving the skill sets of our members of staff and improving communication, but the reality is that if you are looking to create a medical practice that is efficient, effective, and exemplary, it all comes from you.
Image Credits: Karolina Grabowska
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