Intro -- Bob Salitore LO22419

John Gunkler (jgunkler@sprintmail.com)
Sat, 7 Aug 1999 21:14:52 -0500

Replying to LO22379 --

Bob,

I worked with the merger of a large clinic and a hospital in the Midwest a
few years ago. The complexity, and pettiness, of working with physicians'
egos determined me never to work in healthcare again!

Seriously, one thing I had to do was find humorous ways to make the
physicians aware of which role they were in whenever they spoke in a
meeting. I had baseball caps made up with the various roles on them (in
large letters, on the front) and gave each physician a set of caps. No
one could speak without first putting on a cap (to tell us what role they
were coming from.)

Sounds juvenile -- but, then, so were they. Because of the
clinic-hospital connection, the key roles (as I recall) included:
Clinic owner
Practitioner
Customer (of the hospital)
Department Manager (hospital or clinic)
Patient advocate

By the way, the role they assumed when I did not require the caps almost
always was the "practitioner" role -- where they could pretend they were
in life-and-death situations and could yell at people to do things and
expect those things to be done instantly. It is a heady, powerful,
ego-fulfilling role -- and completely inappropriate except in the ER or
surgery -- and they loved being in it.

-- 

"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>