Owning a practice – and I mean owning, not just purchasing – is a process that takes time.
There are multiple facets to know, learn, and understand, and it’s overwhelming when you feel you have to handle everything at once. I wish I could say pearls of wisdom miraculously appeared for my benefit, beautifully placed atop flower petals.
Closer to the truth is they arrived only after I’d stumbled and fallen on my rear end several times. Or they were head-slappingly obvious but I just wasn’t looking. Sigh.
Here are a few benefits of my thud—>butt—>floor experiences during the early years as a new practice owner my fellow dentists may find useful.
3. Learning from my team Mail and taxes aside, our business (actually, any business) is about people. In our case, it is about our patients. You know, the ones that we take care of every day, the source of our livelihood. One of the biggest things I’ve learned is how to interact with patients better by listening and watching my two “oldest,” by which I mean they’ve been with me the longest, employees. Not to mention they’ve been doing this a lot longer than me. Their great rapport with patients makes them feel comfortable, liked, and respected. Of course, this is easy to do when dealing with nice people in a good mood, but boy do they come out with flying colors when a patient is not. Though it doesn’t happen often, I’ve seen them deal with difficult situations with tact and patience. I know if it had been me few years ago, I would’ve let my frustration get the best of me. Patience is a not a virtue that comes easily to me; I have to work hard at it (my kids will confirm this). I’m so glad that over the past few years, I was smart enough to learn from great examples of grumpy patients and potential conflicts handled with grace and respect, and they almost always ended pleasantly, or at least they did not get worse. This has helped me tremendously, and I know it’s working when I see my relationships with my patients getting stronger, and they show their trust by referring family and friends to us. A skill, a practice, and especially our “self” – each is a work in progress. And it should be, or else we get stagnation. Understanding what, how, and why open the door, and if we let it, it’ll give us the clarity and growth we all seek.
This is reprinted with permission from Ritu Rao, a practicing dentist in Dallas and mother of two young children. She writes a regular blog at bizzytoothmommy.com.
