‘Receptionist can make a doctor lose his patient’

Practice Management Group (PMG), a group of eight Pune-based doctors, gives consultation for enhancing doctor-patient relationship. Dr Pramod Jog, chairman of PMG, a consulting paedetrician, reveals the secrets of creating a good rapport with the patient in an interview with Rita Dutta.

What can be done to enhance doctor-patient relationship?

Doctor-patient relationship starts from the moment a patient enters the clinic or the hospital, that is much before the patient meets the doctor in person. The first step in relationship building is that the ambience of the clinic should be conducive enough for the patient to feel like walking in. The second step is on working on his image that the patient has to be fed with before meeting the doctor. The waiting room plays an important role in this. The waiting room should display the medals and certificates that the doctor has won, so that the patient gets a fair idea of the doctor’s intelligence. Press clippings, if any would also help in conjuring a good image of the doctor.

Patients should always be made to feel special. The staff members have to be very polite with them. Most importantly, patients should not be be kept waiting. Patients get extremely irritated, when they are asked to wait. When patients are kept waiting, they also start discussing case history amongst themselves, and if some patient is unhappy with the doctors’s treatment, say a nagging fever which refuses to subside, he would be the first one to voice his dissatisfaction to other patients. This is very damaging for the doctor’s reputation. So segregate patients as much as possible.

What if patients have to be kept waiting?

The doctor need not always give an honest answer about the late-coming. If the doctor is struck in a traffic, or gets late because of some social engagement, the patients can be told about the real reason. This is because patients do not like the doctor to have leisure time. Patients wants the doctor to be perpetually working. So the doctor should give various excuses, the safest being that the doctor is busy operating.

In case of a VIP patient, who cannot be kept waiting, and want to be accorded importance, I suggest that he be whisked to some other room, to make him feel important. Then after showing him due importance, he can be sent to the doctor for consultation.

Staff also play a crucial role in enhancing the doctor-patient relationship. So on what criteria should staff selection take place?

There are four categories of staff. One who is willing to work, and knows how to work. Appoint him. One who is willing to work but do not know how to work. Train him. The other two categories are one who does not know how to work and does not want to work and another who knows how to work but does not want to work. Don’t appoint them. Appoint staff from different community, so that when the festivals come they don’t bunk all at the same time.

How should the staff members be trained to enhance service?

The primary focus should be to train receptionists, so that she knows how to attend calls. Inadvertently, a receptionist’s talk can make the doctor lose a patient. She has to be polite. If some numbers are asked then the receptionist should break the numbers in half and tell it slowly. It is very crucial that information be given on a cordial tone.