Doctors & Staff Issues: Listen Up

It still surprises me how poor many physicians are when it comes to interacting with staff. I've ended up in the middle of a total non-event in one of my clinics in which the doctor overheard a technician speaking to a patient about a treatment. The tech was informing the patient that the time constraints (the patients) wouldn't allow the treatment to be performed and we would have to reschedule. The physician overheard some of this conversation. But instead of speaking to the technician and finding out why the tech took the action she did, he and the office manager got me involved. From what I gathered the laser tech took the appropriate action, the patient was happy, case closed. But my doc sees it differently even though he never spoke to the tech.

Inside any successful clinic there is a huge amount of staff interaction. Physicians or managers who don't really talk to their staff every day will make poor decisions on partial information.