Three problems practicing doctors can't ignore

Healthcare is a more demanding profession than many others. Doctors are well equipped to provide medical services, but they struggle with administrative and operational challenges. Physicians often find themselves juggling patients and paperwork. These challenges might seem daunting, but they also provide physicians with opportunities to improve patient care.

Read on to understand some of the top challenges doctors are facing today.

Evolving Medical technologies

Caregivers are growing comfortable leveraging digital networks to stay in touch with remote patients and coordinate complex care plans through tele-healthcare services. However, once you’ve left medical school, it can prove difficult to keep up with medical advancements.

Here are some techniques for staying updated:

• Learn from colleagues, study through e-learning or print media, and attend meetings and clinical trials. But the financial burden associated with implementing these strategies could be overwhelming.
  
• Hospital management systems cost almost Rs. 80,000, tele-medicine kits from AMD Telemedicine, for instance, costs Rs. 6,57,595 and above. However, certain NBFCs are now offering doctor loans of up to Rs. 2 crore, designed especially for practising healthcare professionals who need financial support.
  

Patient and employee satisfaction

Happy employees = happy patients. Happy and engaged staff can ensure patient satisfaction in this age of value-based healthcare. Some common problems are lack of training, under-qualified staff, miscommunication, and ill-equipped offices. Your front office staff is the first point of contact for a patient; they make the first impression. Medical professionals need to invest enough time and resources to hire and train the ideal front office team.

Here is how you can do this:

• Observe what other practitioners with good online reviews are doing. Call or visit their offices to understand the best practices they follow.
  
• Fine-tune your hiring practices. Remember to clearly convey the skills needed in the initial stages of the hiring process. Look for qualities like telephone etiquette, online reputation management, being open to new technologies and training, and a basic understanding of medical treatments and processes.
  
• Create scripts for answering phone calls and emails to ensure quality conversations with patients.
  

Avoiding burnout

Physicians need to remember their passion for medicine and not let the challenges of the day—a busy waiting room, demanding patients, accountancy rules—drag them down. Stress and heavy workload can cause burnout. Pressures in the form of the need for flexibility, control, influences of culture and values, work-life integration, getting along with the work community and finding meaning in work can take a toll. Some corrective measures like arranging organisational level interventions can help improve resilience in medical practitioners.