If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate - John C. Maxwell
The quote stands even firmer in the context of healthcare professionals. Medical offices are bombarded with work every day, and it gets difficult for medical managers to keep track of everything that's going on. And that's normal. Even if you try to be responsible for everything, your productivity is bound to go down. It will get harder to keep up with time, and you will crash and burn out—that's where delegation comes in.
The Art of Delegating as a Healthcare Professional
Healthcare professionals generally find it hard to delegate. Letting can be a challenge for many, especially relatively new managers. But once you embrace it, you gain more control over your job functions and start developing leadership skills that take you to new places in your job echelon.
Charting your day-to-day medical practice activities and the time it takes is simple, as long as you do it during a busy day. But can you?
Determining what to delegate can be difficult because some doctors can not let go of the responsibility of managing every task. Other doctors are so concerned with reducing "overheads" that they refuse to hire staff.
The Art of delegation says to delegate the work to the lowest-paid professional who is competent enough to do the task diligently. Start delegating tasks to different employees in your medical practice and see the magic happen. It will not only give them a platform to grow but also provide you with the much-needed time to focus on tasks that matter the most. But don't let it flow all around the place. Channel it. Conduct weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your medical staff to get status reports and plan for the week ahead.
Leadership isn't hovering, but it's also not turning a blind eye. A competent leader delegates tasks while trusting the employees and keeps them informed about the larger picture.
Why delegate?
There is a plethora of reasons. We will list some of those below.
- For your mental and physical health - Imagine the amount of stress you would be relieved of if you began doing it. You can better your work-life balance while your productivity at work will increase.
- To become a better leader - Delegation will require you to better your judgment, upskill your employees, and continuously push them to deliver their best work.
- Move to team-based care - There are various levels of credentials, expertise, and diversity in the doctor's profession today, but physicians have never been trained to work on a team or manage a team that does not include only physicians. Delegating your work to non-physicians can help you develop a team-based model of care in your medical practice.
- Cross-training and team building - All staff members must understand the significance of each other's positions. Allowing employees to cross-train can help them feel more like a team.
- Treat more patients - Once you set up a smooth sailing system with the help of delegation -- you can see significantly more patients while simultaneously directing more attention at individuals.
Hitting it home
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t. – Anthea Turner
This quote sums up what we have been trying to convey throughout this blog perfectly. Once you get comfortable with the delegation, there is no going back because you won't want to go back!
There will be times when the delegated work does not come up well or does not match what you would have done. That is okay. You will need to learn to give that much leverage to your co-workers, they might surprise you sometime.
Organizing an office in which doctors are spending as much "quality time" with their patients as possible doesn't have to be revolutionary. But it can be revolutionary in medical practice where it's being done effectively.
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