How to Develop Patience in Your Medical Practice Staff

Many challenges arise in the medical practice that can test your employees’ patience. We don’t need to enumerate them or to look very far. Just consider your typical workday, and you will identify many moments when it would be easy for your employees to lose their patience.

Of course, your employees’ patience is essential to your ability to provide quality care to your patients. As Root(1) suggests, “Patience is not only a virtue in customer service, it is a necessary skill in order to deliver excellent service.” Certainly, impatience can make pretty much any bad situation worse. It rarely—if ever—leads to the most desirable outcomes. Impatience can make employees irritable and turn them into people who are not very nice for your patients to be around. It can make them unpleasant for you and your staff to work with. And it can make them unhappy, as nothing will ever seem to go their way. As Bolton(2) says, “What’s the purpose of building patience abilities? In a word, happiness. Better relationships, more success.” Developing employee patience, therefore, goes far beyond the benefits to your medical practice. As Operation-Meditation(3) succinctly puts it, “You’ll find that once you become a more patient person that you will enjoy life much, much more.”

You may manage employees who claim to lack patience, as though the condition is a foregone conclusion or a characteristic beyond their control. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Says Bolton, “An important idea here is that developing patience is just that. Developing a skill. We aren’t born with it.” This is true even for employees who have a long track record of impatience and for those who claim to have been impatient all their lives. If they want to change, they can. As Operation-Meditation suggests, “Even if you consider yourself to be an impatient person, having patience is something that can be learned. It doesn’t matter how old you are, either. You can learn how to be patient regardless of your age.”

That’s good news both for your employees and for you as their manager. But this leads us to several questions: What conditions support or negatively affect patience? If impatience feels so bad, why are people impatient? How can people develop patience? And, how can you as a medical practice manager help your employees to develop their patience? We explore the answers to these questions in the following sections.

Healthy Lifestyle Habits that Support Patience

The condition of the physical body definitely affects an employee’s ability to be patient. Simply put, employees who feel lousy are more likely to be impatient. That means that they will be more likely to be impatient when they are tired, dehydrated, hungry, overstressed, sick, or otherwise in poor physical condition. Of course, you can’t control the lifestyle choices your employees make. But you can encourage, support, and reinforce good habits. And you can model them for your employees.

The following list offers healthy lifestyle habits that support patience, and suggests things you can do to encourage them in your employees:

• Eat a nutritious breakfast. Skipping breakfast starts the day poorly and sets the employee up for feeling tired and irritable as the day progresses. Encourage employees to eat a good breakfast. Stock the staff refrigerator with healthy breakfast choices, if you have the budget to do so. Encourage employees who skip breakfast to get together early to eat breakfast to start the day right.

• Eat nutritious foods throughout the day. It will be difficult for your employees to exercise patience if they hit an afternoon slump. Be sure that they have sufficient time to eat a healthy, nutritious lunch. When you provide food for a staff meeting or a staff celebration, offer and encourage healthy options, not junk food or overly rich food. Interesting: Corleone(4) suggests that the consumption of aspartame, a sugar substitute found in many food products, has been linked to an increase in irritability and depression. Limit or avoid food and drink choices that contain aspartame when you cater staff events.

• Stay hydrated. Even mild dehydration may decrease patience and increase irritability. Unfortunately, dehydration is more common than many people realize. Body Ecology(5) recommends drinking half of one’s body weight (as measured in pounds) in ounces every day. Share this information with your employees and encourage them to drink water regularly throughout the day. Suggest that they track their water consumption daily, to be sure that they stay well hydrated.

• Get enough sleep. According to Sasson,(6) “Having enough sleep at night affects your degree of patience during the day.” Of course, you can’t enforce how much sleep your employees get each night. But you can encourage them to have more and better quality sleep. You also can try to eliminate their work-related stress, which may be keeping them up at night. Review your typical work day, and look for ways that you can make it less stressful. Huhman(7) also suggests that you put a cap on the number of hours employees work and that you make sure that your employees take their vacations and all other paid time. As Huhman explains, “Consider the benefits paid-time off has on the sleep habits of your employees.”

• Exercise. Exercise is another good way to increase one’s patience level. As Operation-Meditation explains, “Getting a good workout or going on a long walk helps to release built up tension.” It won’t be possible for you to control how much exercise your employees get, any more than you can control their sleep or eating habits. But you can encourage them to exercise. As Gaines(8) suggests, “An easy way to nudge employees to exercise is to partner with a local gym or fitness center, ideally one close to your workplace.” Gaines also suggests that you can encourage exercise groups, hold friendly contests to encourage your employees to exercise, and encourage short bursts of exercise during the day.

• Address illness. Employees who push themselves to work when they are not up to it are more likely to be impatient, as well as more likely to make mistakes. It is also possible that they will be contagious. If an employee is under the weather, do not allow him or her to come to or continue to work.

If you notice a sudden uptick in an employee’s impatience, meet with the employee individually, in private, to find out what’s going on. Tell him or her what you have noticed, and see what he or she says. If the employee doesn’t know what the problem is, you may suggest that he or she consider a change in lifestyle habits. Also consider the possibility that the employee is dealing with addiction, depression, or another condition that requires treatment. Suggest that the employee have a physical and refer the employee to any sources of help that you deem appropriate.

Understanding Impatience

Impatience makes us feel so bad and leads to so many other problems that it seems illogical that we would allow ourselves to become impatient. However, impatience isn’t always a bad thing. As Stone(9) explains, “Impatience can actually serve us well at times.” For example, impatience can motivate us to understand our options better, to explore new options so we can meet a deadline, to find a shortcut, or to switch to a better or more viable goal. If we’re driving a car and become impatient with traffic, most of us will look for another route and take it if we can. That’s the up side of impatience.

It is quite likely that impatience was a primitive self-protection and survival skill.

Human beings may be impatient because our biology is at play. It is quite likely that impatience was a primitive self-protection and survival skill. As Stone explains, “On the ancestral savannah, we had to decide whether or not to persist in a hunt. When it took longer than expected to find game, it was time to consider alternative strategies for obtaining food. Impatience often was good. If it took more than two days to reach a goal, perhaps it was time to switch strategies or switch goals.” Today, Stone says, we have goals that require much more persistence. If we get impatient too quickly, we may never finish a project that adds up to anything. Nevertheless, our primitive impatience is still with us and may bubble to the surface even when it doesn’t offer us any actual benefit, Stone says.

While our primitive ancestors may explain where our impatience originated, that isn’t the whole story. Impatience is still taught and learned, and the workplace today can most certainly foster and fuel our impatience. In fact, impatience is probably much more common today than it was for our primitive ancestors, and even for our parents. Says Stone, “Fifty years ago companies had five year plans. Now five year plans are mostly a joke. CEOs and entrepreneurs today must pay much more attention to the new, and they must be willing to consider changing course much more frequently than they used to.” Add to this that workplace technology today changes at a dizzying pace. We’ve learned that our patience pays off less and less, Stone suggests. That’s what happens, for example, when we overcome our impatience to learn a new technology only to have that technology replaced the moment we have mastered it. In addition, job switching is much more commonplace today than it was for our parents. Many employees have learned that if they become impatient in one job or with their progress up the career ladder, they can quit and move easily to another. In fact, for some employees, job switching is much more than a possibility. It is an expectation.

There simply are more things to become impatient about today.

When we take a helicopter view of our modern world outside of the workplace, we see that it is exponentially more complicated than our ancestors’ world. There simply are more things to become impatient about today. Our social lives are more complicated. Our personal schedules are more complicated. Our gender roles are more complicated. The barrage of news we receive is more complicated. And, inevitably, the more complicated things become, the more the various parts of our lives collide with one another. We answer our work email and phone calls at night and on weekends. Working parents deal with their children’s and aging parents’ problems and concerns while they are at work. Many of us remain accessible to our employers and our employees even during our vacations and when we are out sick. As Stone warns, “Many of those collisions will bring unexpected costs. And those unexpected costs will lead to impatience.”

There is one more factor at play that challenges our patience today more so than it did for our ancestors: increased reinforcement from others. In fact, Bolton suggests that today, impatience can be reinforced so strongly that it becomes “absolutely addictive.” Within the medical practice, an employee may become “addicted” to impatience if his practice manager and coworkers reinforce his impatient behaviors, even if that reinforcement is not intended. Consider this: A little girl who is denied a cookie may throw a temper tantrum. If her behavior leads to her getting the desired cookie, she will learn that her impatience pays off. Likewise, an employee who behaves impatiently in the medical practice may get more attention paid to her than the other employees. She may enjoy kid glove treatment from the practice manager. She may even get herself out of doing unpleasant tasks on the job. If this happens, she will learn quickly that her impatience pays off, just as the little girl did. And she will most likely become impatient whenever there is a “cookie” she is denied that she desires.

How to Develop Your Employees’ Patience: Ten Strategies

Even though both nature and nurture have conspired to make us impatient, the situation is not hopeless. There are many ways that a practice manager can develop his or her employees’ patience. The following 10 strategies have been shown to be effective:

1. Model patience. It is not reasonable to ask your employees to be patient if you show them through your words and behaviors that you are not. Become a role model of patience by handling challenges in your practice thoughtfully and calmly. If you have trouble doing this, seek outside help to improve your own patience.

2. Exploit teachable moments. If employees demonstrate a lack of patience, wait until the moment is over and revisit what happened. Help your employees to explore what went wrong, what could be done better next time, and lessons learned. Most importantly, help them to own their impatience and to commit to improving.

3. Reinforce patience, not impatience. As suggested above, practice managers can reinforce impatience when they give impatient employees what they want. Don’t give in simply to appease an impatient employee. As well, don’t avoid an impatient employee or assign tasks unfairly to the rest of your staff simply so you don’t upset him. Instead, reinforce the behaviors you want to see from your employees—those that are thoughtful, calm, and patient. Talk about patient and impatient behaviors at your staff meetings and performance reviews. Praise and reward your employees for their patience. Above all, don’t soothe or placate an employee who is behaving poorly. That’s too much of a reward and reinforcement.

4. Upgrade your employees’ attitudes toward discomfort and pain. You may have employees who believe that being comfortable is the only state they can tolerate. They may become impatient the moment something is challenging or doesn’t come easily to them. However, working every day in your medical practice will put employees in uncomfortable situations. They will have to deal with difficult patients, new technologies, coworkers who are out sick, equipment that malfunctions, and much more. As the manager, you can help your employees become more tolerant of their discomfort. Make patience the topic of a staff meeting or workshop. Talk about impatience. Describe the impatient behaviors you’re observing. Teach your staff that although they may not always be able to control the circumstances, they can control their reactions to them. Help your employees to see that their impatience is a choice. As Bolton says, “The solution to pain is an inside job.”

5. Create and use positive affirmations to increase your employees’ patience. Positive affirmations, first popularized in the 1920s, are sentences that we repeat to ourselves to reprogram the subconscious mind. As Lively(10) explains, “Affirmations are used to reprogram the subconscious mind, to encourage us to believe certain things about ourselves or about the world and our place within it.” Encourage your employees to think about patience before each day begins and to recite positive affirmations. Examples: “I am a patient person.” “I am in control of how I react.” “I can tolerate discomfort.” Ask your employees to recite positive affirmations aloud with you at the start of each workday. In time, they may increase their patience. As Lively suggests, “What we believe about ourselves at a subconscious level can have a significant impact on the outcome of events.”

6. Reduce your employees’ exposure to impatience triggers. Sometimes, we can’t anticipate the challenges that will trigger our impatience. Often, however, we can see the problem coming. Help your staff identify the challenges that are most likely to trigger their impatience. Then do something about them. Does the phone ring off the hook every Monday morning? Is Mrs. Grimsley a patient who always needs a little extra time and attention? Does Denise need to take a 10-minute break every afternoon to check on her latchkey son when he gets home from school? And do those things trigger your employees’ impatience? If so, anticipate the trigger and amend your schedule accordingly. Likewise, physically fix what you can fix in your office. For example, improve the speed of your Internet service, replace the broken coffee pot in the staff break room, and improve your inventory control system if those nuisances trigger impatience.

7. Squash employees’ impatient talk and self-talk. Ranting about the source of one’s impatience whether aloud, online, or internally serves only to reinforce the bad feelings. Do not allow impatient talk inside your medical practice. Ask employees not to vent their frustrations on social media. Encourage your employees to examine their impatient self-talk. As Bolton suggests, “The main thing here is to just stop the story.”

8. Build your team. Employees may be more likely to be impatient with one another if they don’t know each other. As Sasson suggests, “Employees who get along well will have fewer reasons to become impatient with one another.” Develop a culture in which employees greet one another every day, even coworkers they may not know well. Establish and teach patient practice values such as to be kind and helpful to one another. Insist that employees treat you and one another with respect, and that they be inclusive.

9. Help your employees to practice patience. Exercises can help us develop patience. As Sasson suggests, “Now and then, put yourself on purpose in situations that make you impatient, and try to keep calm and patient. This is a powerful exercise that will increase your patience skills.” Create patience-building activities for your staff. For example, put a jigsaw puzzle or brain teaser puzzles in your staff break room for your employees to work on. Plant seeds in pots and wait for them to grow. Or, invite your staff to string popcorn together for your office Christmas tree. Also give your employees opportunities to delay gratification so they can practice their patience. For example, plan a fun staff outing or party that is many months away. Continue to build excitement for it. Make being patient part of the fun.

10. Link patient behaviors to raises, promotions, and job security. You cannot control what your employees think or how they feel. But you do have a say about what they do. Explain that impatient behavior will not be rewarded with raises and promotions in your medical practice and that it can jeopardize employment. If you have an employee who behaves impatiently with you, coworkers, or your patients, specify precisely what he or she must do to change and by when. Exercise your right to fire an employee whose impatient behavior interferes with the smooth running of or the goodwill of your medical practice. Just be sure to document the behaviors you observe as well as the appropriate verbal and written warnings that you have issued. Make special note of witnesses to the impatient behaviors and any other evidence you have to support your observations.

Equip Your Employees with Self-Calming Impatience Remedies

No matter how much self-care your employees do and how much you encourage them to be patient, there will be times when they may become impatient anyway. Here are eight impatience remedies you can share with them that they can use to lessen and stop their impatience:

1. Notice the signs of your impatience and act right away. Encourage your employees to pay more attention to how they feel in their bodies when their impatience begins. For example, do they feel tension in their muscles? Do they notice that their heartbeat and breathing are starting to accelerate? Noticing these symptoms and taking action right away is important. Once the impatience escalates, it can be a lot harder for them to get control of themselves.

2. Practice presence. Employees who become impatient may be so carried away by their negative feelings that they get mired in them. When this happens, 7 Mindsets(11) suggests that impatient employees bring their attention back to the task at hand by repeating this phrase: “Be here right now, and do what needs to be done.” That will interrupt the impatient feelings and calm them.

3. Remind yourself that impatience is self-sabotaging. In many instances, the action we take that is driven by impatience is ineffective. It is sometimes self-destructive, too. Encourage your employees to revisit the bad choices and mistakes they made when they were impatient in the past. With practice, they can learn to recall these unfortunate moments as soon as they feel themselves becoming impatient again.

4. Find the soft place in your heart. Employees can shift their focus away from their impatience when they learn how to empathize more with others. Help them to remember that everyone has a story. Remind them of the bigger goals of their jobs.

5. Take five deep breaths. Employees who are impatient should remove themselves from the situation as soon as they are able to do so. Once alone, they can close their eyes and inhale deeply into the belly. Then hold the breath for a second, and let the air out slowly. Your employees should feel their bodies calm down. Encourage them to let that physical relaxation flow into their minds, soothing their impatient thoughts.

6. Understand what you can and can’t change. Employees can learn to accept those things that are outside of their control if they stop trying to change them. This is a hard lesson. But employees who are impatient can stop themselves and evaluate whether they can do anything productive to change the situation. If not, understanding that they can’t may help them to let go of their impatience and come to a place of acceptance.

7. Be kind to yourself about your shortcomings. Employees can become impatient with themselves when they feel that they should be perfect. If they are having trouble mastering a new skill, for instance, they may become frustrated and impatient if their progress is slow. Encourage your employees to accept and love themselves. Teach them that they need to be as kind to themselves as they are to others.

8. Practice gratitude. Employees may be able to regain their patience if they stop to innumerate the things for which they are grateful. This is a great way to shift their emotions from negative to positive.

References

1. Root GN III. Examples of excellent customer service skills. Chron. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-excellent-customer-service-skills-2082.html . Accessed March 19, 2018.

2. Bolton J. Four steps to developing patience. Psychology Today. September 2, 2011. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-zesty-self/201109/four-steps-developing-patience . Accessed March 19, 2018.

3. Operation-Meditation. Having patience benefits you and those around you. Operation-Meditation. http://operationmeditation.com/discover/having-patience-benefits-you-and-those-around-you/ . Accessed March 20, 2018.

4. Corleone J. Irritability and diet. Livestrong. October 3, 2017. www.livestrong.com/article/249937-irritability-and-diet/. Accessed March 21, 2018.

5. Body Ecology. Dehydration is more common than people realize: how to tell if you’re NOT getting enough water. Body Ecology. https://bodyecology.com/articles/dehydration_more_common_than_realize.php . Accessed March 21, 2018.

6. Sasson R. How to be patient in the workplace. Success Consciousness. www.successconsciousness.com/how-to-be-patient-in-workplace.html . Accessed March 21, 2018.

7. Huhman HR. Employees don’t get enough sleep, and it’s your fault. Entrepreneur. April 25, 2016. www.entrepreneur.com/article/274277 . Accessed March 21, 2018.

8. Gaines M. How to motivate employees to exercise. Chron. http://work.chron.com/motivate-employees-exercise-1860.html . Accessed March 21, 2018.

9. Stone J. Understanding impatience. Psychology Today. November 4, 2014. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/clear-organized-and-motivated/201411/understanding-impatience . Accessed March 26, 2018.

10. Lively KJ. Affirmations: the why, what, how, and what if? Psychology Today. March 12, 2014. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smart-relationships/201403/affirmations-the-why-what-how-and-what-if . Accessed March 26, 2018.

11. 7 Mindsets. 6 Keys to developing patience. 7 Mindsets. http://7mindsets.com/developing-patience/ . Accessed March 28, 2018.

Five Ways Leaders Practice Patience

Leaders who are unable to practice patience will find their careers short-lived. So says Llopis,(1) who suggests, “The marketplace demands patience and employees will see patience as a sign that their leaders are more compassionate, open-minded, and willing and able to manage any circumstance.” Llopis suggests five powerful ways leaders practice patience in the workplace:

1. See through the lens of others. Impatient leaders sometimes lose their objectivity. According to Llopis, “As a leader, you must be objective enough to step back and remove yourself from personal opinions and begin to see the situation at hand through the other person’s lens.”

2. Evaluate tension points in an unbiased way. Patience requires a leader to evaluate tension points carefully. Remain unbiased and don’t choose sides, Llopis says.

3. Listen and ask questions with a positive attitude. As Llopis warns, “Don’t be in a hurry. Respect and embrace the process.”

4. Seek perspective from a trusted resource. Don’t pretend to know all of the answers. Learn how to pick and choose your battles. More importantly, know when it’s time to seek further counsel, Llopis says.

5. Be responsible to yourself. The next time you encounter a situation that tests your patience, conduct the proper due diligence and be prepared to find that it may be you who is at fault. As well, Llopis suggests, “The next time your patience is tested, use it as an opportunity to evaluate your purpose, vulnerability, and maturity as a leader.”

Reference

1. Llopis G. 5 Powerful ways leaders practice patience. Forbes, June 3, 2013. www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2013/06/03/5-powerful-ways-leaders-practice-patience/2/#68dca048123c . Accessed March 28, 2018.

Dealing with Impatient Coworkers and Patients

An employee may have her own patience under control but find herself confronted at times with the impatience of a coworker or patient. When that happens, Brenner(1) suggests that your employees can try the following:

1. Remove yourself from the impatience when you can. At some point, an impatient person’s conversation may stop being productive. When that happens, Brenner suggests that employees politely excuse themselves by telling the impatient person that they have to get back to their work.

2. Reveal how you feel. For example, if a coworker loses patience with you, Brenner suggests that you say something like this: “I was frustrated today when you complained about such and such. I understand your feelings, but we need to find a way to work together to complete this project. How can we make this a better experience for both of us?”

3. Don’t become impatient. Make the decision that your attitude and work performance are more important than someone else’s impatience. Don’t rush beyond the level of performance that you know is right just to please someone else. As Brenner suggests, “Don’t let them control your attitude, productivity, or quality of work.”

4. Be polite but firm and direct. For example, Brenner suggests that if a coworker or patient interrupts your conversations with others, let her know that as soon as you are done, you will address her concerns. Or if he finds a way to insert himself into your private conversations, tell him that you appreciate his input, but that you need to speak to the person you’re talking with privately.

5. Take a stand. Don’t let an impatient coworker or patient run all over you. As Brenner suggests, “Stand up for yourself and be assertive.”

Reference

1. Brenner L. How to deal with grumpy and impatient co-workers. Chron. http://work.chron.com/deal-grumpy-impatient-coworkers-5333.html . Accessed March 28, 2018.