advice for busy lives
work/life
crowd control Crowded house
Struggling to manage the deluge of phone calls in the morning? Do your receptionists have smoke coming out of their ears dealing with a queue of patients? CARRIE SERVICE finds out how PMs can gain control of the situation
S
ometimes a GP surgery can feel a bit like a warzone: the reception desk like the frontline and the back-office the
trenches where you await your impending doom. Work-related stress has had a fair amount of coverage in the press recently, with figures suggesting that it is the most common reason for people calling in sick. But unfortunately, in general practice, stressful and sometimes confrontational conversations are commonplace. So, how do you regain control?
GET IN LINE Having a huge queue at the reception desk each day not only gives a bad impression of the surgery, the stress it incurs could also have a detrimental impact on how your staff deal with patients. Jo Wadey, practice manager at the St Lawrence Surgery in Worthing, says the key to minimising queues is good management of appointment distribution. “Make sure patients can pre- book appointments two to three weeks ahead – so hopefully only the patients that need to be seen that day will be arriving at the desk,” she advises. If you don’t already allow patients to book appointments online, get involved. “Online appointments are fantastic,” says Wadey. “Patients love it and will log in first thing in the morning and book from home rather than having to come in or ring into the surgery.” If you’re worried that all appointments will get booked, leaving none for patients who don’t have access to the internet, simply limit the amount of appointments you make
42 february 2013
available online so that you are splitting the load between phone bookings and online bookings.
MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK That first mad hour in the morning can be make-or-break for staff – if it’s absolute bedlam, it can throw everybody off-track for the rest of the day. That’s why it’s important that all staff help to ease the pressure during the initial busy period. “Make sure that everyone is all hands on deck first thing in the morning,” says Wadey. At her surgery, all admin staff help reception staff for the first half hour in the morning. “A practice manager helping first thing in the morning is great in many ways. Firstly, you get to know the demands of the patients, also, the receptionists see you helping out and they watch and listen to how you deal with the patients.” This might be a bit of a culture shock for some staff, but it’s a really effective way of improving communication and helping people to see the surgery from the patients’ and receptionists’ viewpoints.
CUSTOMER CARE You and your staff may think you are running a tight ship and doing all you can to help patients. But in busy, stressful environments, behavioural habits start to creep in without you realising. When faced with a queue of confrontational people, it’s easy to immediately get on the defensive, without really listening to the patient’s individual requests or concerns. Becky Simpson, from communication and presentation training
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