ADVICE  COMPLAINTS


Accentuate


Influencing emotions amongst practice staff can help reduce patient complaints. MDDUS senior risk adviser Liz Price explains how


W


HAT emotions do you experience at work? Whatever your own experi- ence, you can be sure that your


practice team experience the same variety – and probably others too. All of us differ in how we feel about the


expression of emotion in the workplace. Emo- tional displays can sometimes be difficult for managers and other team members to handle and they absolutely have an impact on others. Although these impacts can be negative,


evidence is building in support of the view that managers attending to, trying to understand and influencing emotions can be a useful risk management tool. As a practice manager, you could try to


ignore emotion but this can have negative con- sequences for yourself, other team members, the practice and your patients. Emotions can have an impact on all areas


of work within a practice, but I will highlight some of the ways emotions can impact on patient-service-related complaints. Following from these, there are some strategies manag- ers can experiment with to help support the delivery of good patient service, and so reduce the likelihood of patient complaints.


POSITIVE EMOTIONS There is strong evidence that the incidence of complaints in general practice can be reduced if patients have a positive emotional experi- ence associated with encounters across the practice team. Many complaints practice managers deal


with are prompted by behaviour exhibited by clinical and non-clinical staff, and the result- ant feelings experienced by the patient. The degree to which patients like your practice and your team is a function of the emotional value you add to the relationship. Therefore, to deliver patient service which promotes a posi- tive experience in the patient, members of the practice team must add emotional value during each interaction. This applies to telephone and face-to-face contacts, and also in writing. Many practices have tried to improve


customer service by ensuring receptionists answer the telephone or greet patients at re- ception with a smile. Some have tried to script patient encounters positively to improve the patient’s experience, and often this includes making contact with the patient at the end of each encounter.


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AUTHENTICITY It is not that these “improving customer care” initiatives are not useful. In fact the evidence is clear that they are. What causes them to fail is that these behaviours are not always displayed authentically. I am sure you will all have experienced the fake smile and “have a nice day” moments as a patient or customer yourself.


These inauthentic behaviours are very


often related to the morale levels of the team members, the way they feel about their role and the way they feel about the practice. Research suggests that poor morale when delivering patient service predicts declining patient satisfaction.


Think about a receptionist. From their perspective, if they feel unhappy or under-valued in their role then any positive emotion they are asked to display is unlikely to be authentic. Their negative emotions may start to leak out and they may feel stressed by the conflict between what they feel and what their role requires them to display. For a GP, eye contact during


consultations can strongly influence how a patient feels about them. People who feel bad or stressed often struggle to maintain positive levels of eye contact, which can create a poor rapport with patients and perhaps provide them with a negative emotional experience. From the patient’s perspec-


tive, when a receptionist offers up a fake smile, rattles out positive words in a negative tone, or doesn’t seem to be listening properly on the telephone, the over- whelming emotional impact of the encounter is negative. The patient may leave feeling that perhaps the receptionist doesn’t really like them, or is disinterested. Certainly no rapport is felt and so if something subsequently goes wrong, the patient is likely to be less tolerant and more likely to raise a complaint. Worse than this though, research shows


that if a patient is dissatisfied, only four per cent will complain. The other 96 per cent who have had a negative experience will tell oth- ers, perhaps tainting the practice’s reputation


SUMMER 2014  ISSUE 10


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