Mary is our housekeeper at the practice. I’ve blogged about her before, but I wanted to tell her developing story as a little metaphor for building a team and running a business.
Mary’s introduction to the practice some months ago has been extraordinary and she’s absolutely one of my favourite people to meet as we walk round and chat as she makes our workplace into a home so that it looks good, smells good and feels good.
You can usually tell any room that Mary has been in because it looks fantastic and smells fantastic and feels fantastic.
The thing about Mary’s introduction to the business though is this.
Mary sorts out all the practice uniforms and scrubs so that when you come into work, they’re ready for you (even my socks that I wear with my scrubs and my trainers are in the pocket ready to put on).
Because Mary does this (and many other millions of jobs) the dental nursing team do not have to do that.
They did have to do that, as we all did, when we were shorter staffed and tighter 2 years ago.
Because the dental nursing team don’t have to do that, they can do other things which are even more extraordinary than they were before, not to mention our in-practice emergency triage service which is ran by whoever is allocated as the decon nurse to take all the clinical queries off reception so reception can be more human to patients.
Because the decon nurses are now able to do this because the nursing team have more time, this elevates the reception team to a higher level to be able to provide a much more extraordinary service to patients who are contacting us for the first time or the second time or any number of times to make appointments, change appointments and just experience brilliant customer service.
If the patient has a clinical issue or concern, they are passed straight through to the triage nurse who arranges to sort things out for them in relation to the severity of their problem based on the algorithm that the dental nurses themselves have developed because they had the time because they were not being Mary.
Because the receptionists have more time, we can allocate much more time of much higher value to the TCO team who don’t have to make or change appointments or answer clinical queries and they’re just there to provide liaison for all the treatments that are being undertaken and to introduce new patients into the practice who need our help.
The TCO team are allowed to do this because the reception team have been elevated to a higher level because the dental nursing team have been able to take from them clinical tasks which were much more appropriate for dental nurses than they were for receptionists and this has happened because Mary has freed up the dental nurses.
Because the TCO’s are working at a higher level I speak to patients on the phone far, far less than I ever did.
Because the TCO’s are able to speak clearly, openly and honestly about all the treatment that’s being undertaken or about issues or problems or difficulties that patients are having with appointment scheduling or decision making then I don’t have to do that (and neither do the other clinicians).
Because of this I can be more clinical and elevate my clinical work to a higher level and be less burned out.
I’m able to do this because the TCO’s have been elevated, because the receptionists have been elevated because the nurses have been elevated because of Mary and so Mary is the champion of the world.
I know you understand that this is a metaphor for building a team and a business and a structure and a pyramid and it’s happened over a period of time such that people may not have specifically noticed exactly what has happened, but it has happened not by chance but by design.
Building teams and organising human resources and inspiring people to do jobs that are above the level that they’re currently at, to stimulate them and improve them is a fundamental basic task that we all have to be taking on in a world which is so devastatingly complicated and running away so quickly that without doing this our house of cards would surely collapse beneath us.
Blog Post Number - 3112
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