I remember as a kid waiting in my dentist's office at least 45 minutes to an hour before I would be seen. BOY DID I HATE IT!!! I always assumed that maybe because I was a kid they thought it was OK. I got a little older and they were still just as late. Then I realized that they were just late for everyone.
When I became a dentist, the one thing I promised myself that I would do better, was to be on time for my patients appointments. It is my feeling that everyone tries to plan their day based on the appointments and commitments that they have made with others. If people are making the effort to be ontime for me, it is not fair for me to make them late to their appointments with others. Taking into account the nature of what we do I feel that my track record has been pretty good. I am usually but not always ontime. If I am late I have my staff notify my patients so they will at least know where we stand.
This past Tuesday I have to admit, I think I was behind for just about every patient. A number of emergencies (my staff know that emergencies must be seen the same day) and one scheduling error and boom the whole day we were playing catch up. At the end of the day we sat down at our end of the day meeting (which was now half an hour late). We were all pretty tired and we just talked about the day. We had gotten everything done but it just didn't get done the way we wanted to do it. We looked at our day and we realized that so many unforseen factors had taken place. We all sat there and immediately the ideas started to pour out on how to do our best that this should not happen in the future. We are making changes to try and improve, but does this mean that we will never be late again? No, because as they say "stuff happens!" What I can tell you is that we are always trying to do better and learn from the "stuff".
I will always believe that being on time matters.
Just another fun day doing Dentistry in Hamilton for a Hamilton Dentist.
No comments:
Post a Comment