Twelve habits of highly effective ophthalmologists
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“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
– Peter Drucker
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
– Amelia Earhart
This month, let’s discuss what distinguishes exceptional ophthalmologists from the merely average ones.
Of course, we are talking about a matter of mere degrees here. By definition, all eye surgeons have already successfully run through one of the world’s toughest gauntlets:
- Mustering the discipline to persevere as an obsessed student through 8 years of high school and college.
- Deferring gratification by spending twice as many hours in formal education compared with folks who stop after an undergraduate degree.
- Standing up not only to the unforgiving judgment of your oral board panelists, but to an extra 30-plus years of judgment from peers, patients and third-party payer clerks.
What is it about exceptional ophthalmologists? What makes them so? Is theirs a kind of unconscious excellence, or is it something they curate intentionally?
As a consulting ophthalmologist-ologist, I have had a 45-year-long ringside seat to both the profession and the business of eye care. Over that time, I have worked chiefly with two extreme types of doctors: the wildly successful overachievers (“I’m just getting started. Help me do even better!”) and the less successful ones (“What are we doing wrong here?”).
Here are the trade secrets the overachievers have taught me about being effective and successful in this marvelous, enigmatic, all-consuming profession.
1. Be an energizing spirit
People enjoy movies, concerts and stage plays, in part because they are so energizing. After 2 hours, you walk back out onto the street more pumped than when you entered the theater. Powerful and effective doctors are like effective performers. They add positive energy to each person in their practice, staff and patients alike.
2. Be a calm, efficient, intensely hard worker
Leading doctors are the first to arrive and the last to leave. They walk just a bit faster down the hall than everyone else. They multitask. They remember last year’s conversations as well as they remember last week’s. They embody a relaxed intensity. They have taken the time to learn more than you. Maddeningly, they are almost always right.
3. Adhere to near-perfect performance standards, while forgiving human fallibility
Ophthalmology prides itself on having “perfect” as the default performance standard. This is, of course, a myth. Half of all ophthalmologists perform below-average surgery, and half work in below-average practices. The best doctors are infected early in their careers by this institutional, ophthalmological striving for perfection, while tempering this with the knowledge that human staff will often fall short of this goal.
4. Pursue communication excellence
The especially effective eye surgeon is an attentive listener and a lucid speaker. When expressing themselves, they convey both facts and moods in the fewest words possible. Whether writing, speaking or even sending nonverbal signals, they make themselves clear to others. They help team members who see things differently get on the same page. They transfer with fidelity the owner’s wishes to the team and send the team’s concerns back up the chain of command. And as mundane as it sounds, they return texts, emails and phone calls promptly.
5. Be grateful and complimentary
Of all the things that people remember, they remember best how you make them feel. Praise patients who are compliant with your care plan. Praise staff who help you get through the day. Praise your attorney for giving you peace of mind. People will walk through glass to make your professional life easier if you simply (and frequently) express your gratitude at every opportunity.
6. Be multifocal: See both the big picture and the tiniest details
Because eye surgeons deal in such clinical minutiae, it is only natural that they should focus on the microscopic details of their practice. Such attention to detail is necessary but not sufficient in superior practice owners. In addition to picking out the granular details, the effective physician stands back and sees how all the grains of sand come together to make up the beach.
7. Be numerate, with a visceral feel for the numbers
Effective practice leaders ask objective questions obliging numeric answers. Not: “How’s it going in billing this week?” But: “What percentage of our open accounts are still out over 90 days?” They have a memorized command of the practice’s key performance indicators. They know when the numbers are favorable. They know when the numbers are “off” and corrective action is needed. And most importantly, they know their own limitations. When they are mystified by an adverse figure, they seek out advice.
8. Make every second count
Like a seamstress, you sell your time and talent and are paid by the number of units produced. If you want to earn well, you have to work fast. It is a fine balance. You need to move smoothly through each exam without unnecessary steps while still conveying thoroughness and caring to each patient in your chair. The key is to be intentional and to simultaneously work while watching yourself work. As a simple exercise, ask a staff member to follow you around for a clinic morning, writing down what they observe you doing each passing minute. Simply having a proctor shadowing you, you will notice yourself working faster, with less wasted motion. Your clinic will not end on time. It will end early.
9. Accomplish more by delegating
The biggest rookie mistake of young doctors is to not sufficiently develop and lean on their support staff. In all the truly great ophthalmology practices I have visited in the world, the physicians accomplish superior clinical results for high volumes of patients without personal exhaustion by patiently curating a crack team of people who, together, know how to do every nonphysician job in the practice.
10. Be thrifty
The happiest doctors I know are financially independent at least a decade before they choose to retire. We can only partially control how much we make. But we all have complete control over how much we spend. Effective eye surgeons spend well under 80% of their personal incomes and save the rest intelligently for that inevitable time when they are no longer able to work.
11. Cultivate mentors
Finding and interacting well with mentors is one of the most important superpowers of the truly effective surgeons I know. Rather than passively listening to a lecture or reading an article, they will fearlessly reach out to “Dr. Famous” and ask them for help. In exchange, they reward their mentors with their personal success story and abundant gratitude. Win-win.
12. Heal thyself
This doctoring business is a rough gig. The pressures are enormous. By around 50 years old, halfway through, some ophthalmologists are looking haggard. Others are perky. What is the difference? The perky ones do all those boring, simple things you learned about in high school, not medical school. They do not work beyond their personal capacity. They eat right, exercise and get restful sleep. They marry well and wisely. They cultivate friendships. They take good advice when they become unwell and sustain their vitality over the course of a challenging career.
- For more information:
- John B. Pinto is president of J. Pinto & Associates, Inc., an ophthalmic practice management consulting firm established in 1979. He is the country’s most published author on ophthalmology management topics, including John Pinto’s Little Green Book of Ophthalmology: Strategies, Tips, and Pearls to Help You Grow and Manage a Practice of Distinction, UP: Taking Ophthalmic Administrators and Their Management Teams to the Next Level of Skill, Performance, and Career Satisfaction (with Corinne Wohl), Simple: The Inner Game of Ophthalmic Practice Success, and Ophthalmic Leadership: A Practical Guide for Physicians, Administrators, and Teams. Available now for purchase at slackbooks.com. Receive 20% off with promo code PINTO20. He can be reached at 619-223-2233; email: pintoinc@aol.com; website: www.pintoinc.com.
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