Before I started The Physicaltherapy Centre, I spoke to one of my mentors seeking advice. Starting any business involves a certain amount of risk and an enormous amount of confidence in yourself and your skills. I felt I needed a push from someone who had taken their own leap of faith, someone who could provide me with some words of wisdom in starting and sustaining a business venture and in being a successful Health Practitioner.
This mentor of mine is a pathologist who started one of the largest
pathology franchises in South Africa. Aside from the day-to-day
challenges of running a business, he felt every health practitioner should remind themselves of each day in
practice.
The 3As
1. Ability.This is where it should start for every
health practitioner – you have to be good at what you do. It is vital
that a health practitioner add to his or her skill set each year. A
practitioner will become more and more experienced every successive year
in practice, but this is not enough to remain at the top of your game.
There are hundreds of treatment modalities, medicines and research
journals available to study. It is important to engage in further
readings and extra study so that you may continue to offer the best
available treatment to your patients.
For me, working in health is a passion of mine, and living a healthy
life has been something Ive practiced since a young age. In my opinion,
unless youre passionate about helping others, you are starting on the
wrong foot. It is also important to lead by example. If you are not
living by the ways you advise your patients to, you are not doing your
job. As an example, my own experience in practice and competing in high
level sporting events, has enabled me to fine tune my skills to offer
patients a refined and effective brand of physical therapy.
2. Affability.If you hope to make a living through
caring for others, it should go without saying that one needs to show
warmth and friendliness. One of the things I love most about my
profession is the chance to learn about and interact with the range of
wonderful personalities that flow through my practice.
For some people, seeing a health practitioner can be an uncomfortable
experience. This may not necessarily be restricted to the nature of
their complaint, but also because they may simply dislike the process of
having a full history, examination and treatment carried out on them by
a stranger. The ability of that practitioner to make their patient feel
comfortable and trusting of them will facilitate better communication
between the two, and thus hope to see a quicker resolution of the
presenting complaint.
Today, I feel privileged to have formed many strong, yet
professional, relationships with my patients. I enjoy the fact that I
can walk around my local area and have some of my patients come up to me
with a friendly greeting.
3. Availability.Another great benefit to being a
health practitioner is, to some degree, having the ability to pick and
choose your own working hours. The challenge here for practitioners is
finding the balance between how often and how little to work.
Essentially, if your patients always find it tough to make an
appointment with you, no matter how good you may be at your craft, they
will find someone else who is prepared to treat them.
I am certainly guilty of working long hours, but as I consider it
something I love to do, I get through these hours with relative ease.
Fortunately for my patients, this has meant they can often expect to see
me on days like Christmas or New Years Eve. I also happily receive
regular emails from my patients where I can often troubleshoot their
complaints through cyberspace.
Of course, not everyone is expected to go this extra mile. The point
is that if your patients know you are available to them most of the
time, they are more likely to find you a reliable source of help and
demonstrate longevity as patients.
Clearly, there are many other facets to running a successful health
practice, but from a practitioner point of view, I try to keep the 3As
at the forefront of my mind. When I am in consultation with my patients I
try to deliver the best possible treatment I can for that person at
that particular time present time consciousness. Once they leave the
practice, I urge them to contact me if they have any concerns between
appointments, and endeavour to respond to their inquiries the first
chance I get.
It is these minor extensions of oneself which I feel attracts more people to a health practitioner. I look forward to building stronger and more rewarding relationships with both my current and future patients.
Tom has been a member of the Australian Chiropractors Association (ACA) and Chiropractic Australia in the past.
If you are interested in coming in for a consult give us a call on 02 9922 6116 or book online with us on our website.
