In 2008 I had a seismic revolution within my working and personal life.
At very short notice, I left the practices I had worked at for almost 11 years having built up a very successful oral surgery and implant referral practice as an associate. I felt I was forced into this situation by circumstances out of my control and I spoke to my wife and family members about this at length over a short period of time. I accepted that I would take a 50 – 70% cut in income and work less and change the way I lived my life entirely. I didn’t exactly work out like that!
The space that I created, I used to improve the services I provided and also to make contact with people outside of my normal sphere. This has lead to the situation that I am in at the minute, as a partner in 2 very successful practices in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, providing referral-based services, which have gone from strength to strength.
Of late, it has been impression that the recession has finally arrived for us, after 4 years of un-precedented growth. Things have got tighter, a little bit harder, nothing terrible but a little bit of space is starting to appear again. It would be very easy for someone like me to worry about this and stress about it, to think that very soon I will be working 60 hours a week in an access centre to try to pay the bills. This, of course, would probably be somewhat of an over reaction and I prefer to look at these situations as an opportunity to be brilliant again. When we are very, very busy with patients, lots of patients coming and going, new patients all the time, surgery to do and cases to plan it is very difficult to examine the service that I provide and to make it better. It’s hard to do the little things I want to do, that I write down all of the time as part of the improvement process. When the heat comes off for a little while, it is really important for me not to panic and to use the time that becomes available to make those minor improvements that make things fantastic.
This is what I intend to do over the next little while, to make things at the practices just that little bit better.
Leave a comment