Yesterday a co-worker and myself went to lunch and as usual we began discussing current office issues. Now, just to let you know we do not talk about other people in the office, usually if we discuss office issues it is to come up with some productive way to resolve situations we are up against. Our office is in the process of changing over from paper records to all electronic, and what a big process this is. None of us would have guessed there was so many steps to get through in order to move ahead in a new way. As can be expected along with this process has come questions, difficulties and plain old frustrations, this is to be expected. As an office we sat and talked about the possible frustrations and ways that we can deal with them before hand so we would be ahead of the game. The issue that is happening is that when frustrating situations happen we all (the entire staff) will stop and discuss them and at times the discussion does not "sound" real positive. Now our office is not that big and our patients can hear what is happening in the back office when they are in the waiting room. They also hear the tone of our voice and how we feel about what is going on. Now something negative may not be going on at all, but if the patients hear us discussing something that we are having problems with they may "misinterpret" what is actually happening because they really do not know, such as a statement like "why does this keep happening, this is wrong." They have no idea what it is about, all they know is that something in the office is wrong. As an office team we need to have clear communication with each person on the team so we can discuss current issues, feelings and the "weather"without causing an issue. The problem we have been having is (the staff) have let our "customer radar" down. Where we normally would be very sensitive to what we say and what our patients can hear, we are now so busy and consumed with learning to do things differently and the frustrations that come with that we have become desensitized, which is not good. We have written down some good notes with examples of situations that have happened this week and tomorrow at our staff meeting we will discuss this situation and make sure that when we are done we have all re-tuned our radar back to where it should be. What is amazing is how easily we all have drifted from our norm,when it comes to "for our ears only" in the office. I am glad we realized it so quickly this way we can correct the situation and move on. I also am very thankful that my co-worker was able to realize that this situation was happening and wanted to bring it to our attention so we could correct it.
"Every player on the team is important to the total outcome of the service we give our customers." ~ T.C. Totaro
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