One must study and make plans on at least a few points
before starting out in private practice. The following must be considered
absolutely necessary:
Mission statement
This is a description of what your practice means to you.
It should include your aims and objectives in starting practice. An outline of
the type of set-up and the materials and resources should be included. Your values
and ideals should also be stated. This mission statement should have validity
for a fixed time period after which it will need to be revised.
Finances
There will be three financial stages roughly
1. Starting
phase- your earning will be less than expenses and you will make a loss.
2. Middle
phase- Your earning will generate income covering your expenses but you will
not be able to satisfy financial commitments required for running your family
3. Income
phase- Your profits will give you enough money to live comfortably.
One has to make a sound plan for all three phases.
You will also have to decide your fees and make a plan a
budget of expenses.
Team building
Even if you are a single-person unit, you will need to
hire people to assist you in various tasks. This is your ‘team’. You will need
a sweeper, cleaner, nurse, receptionist and locum and you must hire everybody
very carefully. There is a tendency to hire the person who comes the cheapest.
This is the riskiest way to choose your team. Even if it is for a task like
sweeping check the person for expertise, regularity, integrity and then fix the
remuneration.
Marketing
In marketing one has to make efforts to inform target
audience of your presence and availability. As medical practice is a
professional and noble work, one must do the marketing ethically and gracefully.
If you have to keep all these things in mind, a marketing strategy will have to
be thought out in advance. Think out every minute thing: where you will put
your board, what type of board, how will you describe your work to others, what
type of stationery you will have, will you advertise (within permitted limits),
etc
Initially you will have to visit other nearby doctors,
educational institutions, NGOs, etc and introduce yourself. Your good work will
advertised by the patients who have benefitted from your expertise. Even if you do not get patients as soon as
you expect, don’t get upset. Medical practice is largely a function of time and
your good work. Always do your work with utmost sincerity and competence. This is
the most effective marketing strategy.
Administration
A good administration allows you to remain in control of
your practice. It adds experiential learning to your practice. Merely by doing
your practice administration you will learn as much as no MBA course in the
world can teach you. You should be able to have a system of recording and
managing your expenses, time and manpower. Nowadays everybody has a computer. You
can even use simple excel worksheets. You must maintain data base of expenses,
income, travel, time spent, patients, employee attendance and performance, at
the least. After getting the data, you will become aware of the assets and
liabilities of each domain of your practice in the earliest stages. Then you
can plan out how to deal with these intelligently.
Self management
This involves managing both physical and mental aspects
of yourself. Your appearance represents your
practice in a concrete visual form. You
are to convey to the patients that you are competent, confident, sincere and
reliable in your work. Doctors should decide on a type of dress that is smart,
comfortable and culturally accepted. You should learn to speak in the local
language and also in reasonably good jargon-free and slang-free English. Practice
a polite, soft, clear way of speaking.
Take very good care of your health. A healthy doctor
makes for a great role-model; an admiring clientele is the best type you could
wish for. Choose a reliable and competent colleague as your family physician,
steer clear of the tendency to self treat.
Most doctors are prone neglecting their mental health. Have
a regular stress management strategy. Find someone to talk to, or to guide you
in times of crises. Learn to deal with difficult situations in a systematic and
logical way.
The first few years of practice are extremely stressful-
they will test not only your expertise but also your character and human-ness. Plan
as much as you can and take care. We need lots of competent, ethically
motivated doctors to survive in practice.
