Making the best of a bad deal (part 2)

Last week I wrote about becoming aware of your weaknesses and developing strategies to manage them. I mentioned my own personal weakness of not tolerating stress well.

I hope that some of you have taken an inventory of your weaknesses and thought about strategies.

This week I thought I'd give you three examples of strategies I used to manage my stress. These examples are meant to be thought starters for how you can manage your own weaknesses.

  1. Patients who failed appointments stressed me. I hated having my time wasted by inconsiderate people. Therefore, I developed strong systems around preventing failed appointments and rapidly weeding "repeat offenders" out of my practice.

  2. Interrupting when I was concentrating on a procedure stressed me. Therefore, the rule was "If the building is on fire, tell me. Otherwise, don't interrupt."

  3. Running late stressed me. Therefore, I knew exactly how long any procedure took and would only commence it if I had sufficient time.

What weaknesses do you have? Talking too much? Not being able to explain treatment well to patients? Running late? Feeling patients' emotional pain because of too much empathy?

Whatever your weaknesses are there are strategies to help you.

Feel free to leave a comment with your weakness(es) if you'd like me to make some suggestions for strategies for you.

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Making the best of a bad deal