11 results for month: 02/2018

12 Steps to Emotionally Intelligent Healthcare

Fine-tuning high-emotion healthcare services can make a big difference in patients' satisfaction and outcomes. Patients’ emotions influence their quality and value ratings as well as what they tell their friends. High-emotion healthcare includes services related to major life events, some of which are at the ... More

Answering a Cry for Help with a Touch of Humanity

Dr. Margaret Cary helps a distressed stranger and recalls one of the main reasons she went into medicine. “My papers…my paaaapers.” I was at a Falls Church superstore checkout counter when I heard her cry. My first reaction to nonthreatening inappropriate sounds is to ignore them and leave the area as soon as ... More

Are Physicians Coachable? (YES!)

What is it about physicians? The stereotype of the brilliant and bold surgeon who reigns over the operating room whose mantra is “A chance to cut is a chance to cure.” The ever-smiling pediatrician wearing a bowtie with small elephant on his stethoscope. And the pipe-smoking psychiatrist, steeped in Freud and saying ... More

Coaching in The Republic of Medicine

How much of a coach’s frustrated “What is it about physicians?” is generated by preconceived assumptions rather than by remaining curious? I am a physician and, as with most people, our views of ourselves and our beliefs in what we project to others may vary wildly with what people see. We’re a culture. Before ... More

Develop a Coaching Culture

What might you do to develop a coaching culture in your office, in your organization? “I know I blow up and get angry. I am protective about my patients and the physicians in my department and I can’t help myself.” Dr. Leonard was one of my coaching clients, a surgeon who had left a trail of destruction by his ... More

How One Student Struggles to Become a Good Doctor

Coaching and role playing: compassionate communication with patients. Margaret Cary, a longtime physician who teaches a class each year at Georgetown University’s medical school, is the founder of the Cary Group Global, a company that helps doctors adapt when they move from patient care to executive jobs. Jack Penner, ... More

Learning Non-Technical Skills Saves Patients’ Lives

I turned the corner and there it was. The Death Star, as locals call it, because it’s star-shaped, imposing, and has a helipad on the roof. Also known as the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow—a state-of-the-art, 14-floor hospital completely interlinked, part of the National Health Service in Scotlan... More

The Essential Difference Between Management in Medicine and Managing in Business

I trained as a family physician and spent more than 16 years taking care of patients, primarily in an outpatient setting in Denver, Colorado. I did everything from delivering babies to delivering bad news. I loved every minute, but eventually, I was attracted to challenges offered on the business and regulatory sides of ... More

The Value of Coaching in Medicine

With Jack Penner Jack and I recently joined Dave Etler, Administrative Services Coordinator for Student Affairs and Curriculum with Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, and Carver medical students Amy Young, Aline Sandouk, and Mark Moubarek at The Short Coat Podcast for “weird news, fresh views, ... More

The Value of Presence in Medicine

When an American doctor is asked to examine her friend's mother in a Chinese hospital, she realized it was her presence and caring that really mattered. Zhuo came with a self-assured attitude, lots of stories, and several films under her belt. I had volunteered to host a film director during the Denver International Film ... More