Enrolling in Medicare

Escort your geriatric patients to the exam room

To improve my care of older patients with ambulatory difficulties, I greet them personally at the reception room and walk with them to the exam room. This allows me to assess their gait and ability to follow directions, and they also generally appreciate my hospitality.

Keep your staff safe

When our clinic closes late in the evening, walking out into the dark parking lot causes safety concerns, especially among our female staff. We've found that leaving as a group alleviates this anxiety, fosters a feeling of togetherness and team cohesion, and reduces the chances of adverse events.

Use metaphors to increase patient compliance

One of my biggest challenges as a physician is getting on the same page as my patients. I have found that coming up with simple metaphors helps me explain complex ideas to my patients. For example, I explain the parts of cholesterol by saying: “HDL is the happy kind, and you want it high for your heart. LDL is the lousy kind, and you want it low.” I explain the classic idea of prevention by comparing it to changing the oil in a car: It can be an inconvenience and it costs money, but it prevents trouble later.

I use dozens of metaphors like these, and I am delighted when patients say, “No one has ever explained it to me like that before.” I know that information encourages compliance.

Get to know your staff with games at staff meetings

Staff meetings can be boring, directed affairs, so we begin with a game that enables members of our office team to get to know each other better. We started our last staff meeting by each writing two true facts about ourselves and one untrue “fact” on a sheet of paper. We collected and redistributed the papers so that each person read someone else's out loud. We tried to guess the person's identity and which fact was not true. We kept score so it was competitive, but the real fun was finding out who came in first in the National Spanish Exam, who drove a Corvette and who hates folding laundry. Getting to know your staff builds morale.

Display family pictures in your exam rooms

I like to display pictures of my wife, children and extended family in the exam rooms where patients can see them. I update the pictures every two or three months and as special events take place in our lives. Many of my patients tell me they look forward to seeing my family pictures, and they are eager to talk about them. Talking about my family seems to calm my patients and makes patient care more enjoyable for me.