6 steps for dealing with difficult doctors

Hospitals & Health Networks says that they have such characteristics as being “easily angered, too busy to be bothered with meetings, too brilliant to take any constructive feedback.”

“That behavior can be difficult for nurses to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but it becomes harmful or even deadly when a physician refuses to follow a hospital’s established safety practices, such as washing hands or following a checklist.”Imogen Mitchell, M.D., a professor of medicine and associate dean at Australian National University, and intensive-care unit director at Canberra Hospital, suggests:

1. “Seek out a clinical champion” to “engage both the heads and hearts of fellow docs so that they are hit with the reality of the problem.”

2. “Establish a common purpose and vision.”
3. “Engage other doctors to develop the intervention and implementation strategy: Hospitals should start off small, and make it easy at the beginning.”
4. “Communicate, communicate and communicate: Hospitals must create plenty of opportunities to talk with their physicians….”
5. “Identify barriers: Seek out any potential hurdles that might get in the way of your efforts, and determine how to overcome them….”
6. “What‘s in it for me? Tune into what makes such efforts meaningful for physicians. People are resistant to loss, not change, so try to mitigate the perceived loss.”

News & Views

Contact Info

News & Views

Email

Phone

Follow Us On