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, 25, is hardly ...
MoreDr. 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 possible. �...
MoreI 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 Scotland—it was the ...
MoreDr. Margaret Cary is a senior executive, physician, educator, professional speaker, author, facilitator and executive coach who combines broad management and patient care experience in health care, information technology and the media.
Michael’s Story: The Beginning “I’m straightforward, to the point,” said Michael, the CEO at a large inner-city hospital. “The people I work with—they may not like me, but they know I’m right.” “What else?” I said to Michael, whom I had just been retained to coach. “I just wish they understood me. I do what’s […]
CATEGORIES: Coaching Emotional Intelligence Physician Leadership
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 top of the Holmes and Rahe scale of stressful life events that can contribute to […]
CATEGORIES: Emotional Intelligence Physician Leadership Quality of Care The Doctor Weighs In
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 possible. “My […]
CATEGORIES: Leadership Patient Safety
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 little. None of […]
CATEGORIES: Coaching Physician Leadership
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 you […]
CATEGORIES: Coaching Physician Leadership
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 […]
CATEGORIES: Coaching Physician Leadership