Ryan Gray, MD

Most patients are well-meaning and generally nice. But every now and then, you will get one who is a total pain to deal with. Maybe your patient lies to you, gets sarcastic, asks for special “favors,†or generally just pushes your buttons. We’ve all been there.

It is frustrating, to say the least, when your patients take their frustrations out on you. And, as if having to deal with an angry patient isn’t bad enough, providers now have to worry about the threat of legal action more than ever before.

Whether delivered intentionally or not, some physician comments are unhelpful at best and low-blows at worst. Saying certain things to patients can actually increase your risk of having a malpractice suit filed against you, making it especially important for you to always be mindful when speaking with patients.

When a patient is dying, it can be difficult to know what to say to them. Here are a few tips and approaches that I have gathered from experts that I hope will help you get through those hard conversations while continuing to provide the best possible care to your patient.

Being a good doctor is hard work, especially considering the current state of our health care system. Some doctors, however, are simply bad news. And because most doctors today have comparable education and credentials, bad doctors don’t exactly stick out like sore thumbs.

Layoffs are tough. But, the economic downturn, lower insurance reimbursements, increased business expenses and the expectation that medical practices “do more with less†may make layoffs unavoidable.

You do your best to attract qualified job candidates, ask the right interview questions and ultimately hire the best and the brightest to work at your practice. But, no matter what you do, it is inevitable that you will have problems with your workers from time to time.

At one point or another, every medical practice will have to deal with unmotivated employees. Unmotivated staff members can cause all sorts of problems, from a slowdown in productivity to decreased profits, poor morale and patient dissatisfaction.

“Flip the Clinic†is an open experiment that involves breaking the traditional health care mold. Clinic flippers are using a new strategies and techniques to empower patients and engage them in their health care while maximizing time with practitioners.

When you become a doctor, it’s no secret that you will have to deal with people all day long. And, in the course of these many human interactions (sometimes under stressful circumstances), there are bound to be some awkward, uncomfortable and painfully silent moments.

Even if you know what you’re doing, it can be hard to make good hires. Because doctors are trained to practice medicine, many receive little or no training in how to run a business—or how to make great hires for non-clinical positions. Here are some tried-and-true tips to help you make sure your next hire doesn’t turn into your next headache.

The practice of medicine moves pretty fast, leaving little time for doctors to involve themselves with insurance, paperwork and office business processes. Of course, quality doctors and nurses are critical to excellent patient care. But without the right office staff, your practice could quickly be sent into a tailspin.

In my last post, I discussed the characteristics that good nurses possess that enable them to make a positive impact on a patient’s care experience. Unfortunately, bad nurses can make a significant negative impact on patient care—sometimes even more profoundly.

Monitoring the health of patients around the clock is a challenging job. From the physician’s standpoint, that is just one aspect of what happens during the day. It’s even more challenging to meet the many other needs that patients have, such as answering questions and keeping them happy and comfortable. Good nurses know how to juggle all these jobs, and many more

By advocating, providing education and keeping an eye out for red flags, excellent nurses can play a critical role in keeping patients safe and healthy. Here are some ways that nurses help doctors to do their jobs better.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) started out as a good idea. But, many medical professionals have started to read too far into HIPAA, making doctors’ jobs more difficult and, in some cases, affecting current and future patient care.

Physicians don't have enough time to properly research each medication on their own. The pharmaceutical industry needs to better teach physicians about their medications instead of driving patients to demand them.

With the amount of information we are hit with day in and day out, our minds need a way of quickly triaging it. This is what stereotyping does. But let's not confuse stereotyping with prejudice. The latter is negative and the former doesn't have to be.

I'm always fascinated by the Medscape physician reports every year and seeing how unhappy physicians are. How burnt out they are. How dissatisfied with their careers they are.

When I first started seeing patients on my own, I would get annoyed when patients came in with printouts from WebMD, Health.com, or the dreaded Wikipedia.