Sunday Science: Pessimism: WOOP there it is.

Pessimism Is Good For You: "The Science of Us"

New York Magazine posted this video about a study on pessimism and optimism conducted by German scientist Gabriele Ottingen. Ottingen suggests that when it comes to achieving your goals, a little bit of pessimism can actually prove to be a helpful source of motivation.

While most people would tell you "Think Positive! If you think you can do it then you will!" Ottingen suggests that this type of thinking can actually distract you from addressing the obstacles and challenges involved in achieving your goal, and that pessimistic thinking can actually help to increase motivation and allow you to have a better outcome when addressing these obstacles and challenges. What Ottingen is basically saying is that if your looking at your glass half empty, will provide for a stronger motivation to fill it than it would to look at your glass half full, and Ottingen isn't just making this up; There are decades of scientific research to support this idea!

Ottingen comes up with a process for utilizing pessimism in goal setting which she calls
WOOP". "WOOP" stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, and Plan. Basically step one is to think about what it is that you wish to do, then think about the outcome of that wish, next think about the obstacles that stand in the way of that outcome, and the most important step is to plan for what you will do when those obstacles occur. Ottingens process is essentially about taking positivity and negativity and utilizing logical thinking strategies to make them into reality.

Midweek Motivation!

Because some time all you need is something sweet to get you through your week. Happy Wednesday.

ICD 10

ICD10 conversion poses lots of new challenges and concerns for health care professionals.

What is ICD10 though? the International Classification of Diseases Edition 9 has been used to classify and code for clinical billing purposes since 1979. ICD10 is well on it's way to bring new and more comprehensive coding structure.

This is a really great video that sums up ICD10 - Because everyone in the health care profession should know what this is & what to expect!

Health Reform Explained

Want to know more about the U.S. Healthcare Reform!? Check out this video, It's a nice simple intro to this hot topic in health care & provides a lot of valuable information to help get a better understanding of what the healthcare reform is & how it applies to patients, healthcare professionals, and the U.S. society as a whole.

Quality Always Comes First!

One person can do many things, but not everything;

Having strong team relationships are the key to success in any health care organization. These types of team relationships determine not only how much your team can accomplish as a whole, but how well.

Looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the patient and on patient health outcomes, it is required to recognize that the most important aspects of health care are not quantitative but qualitative (i.e. at the end of the day, it is the “how well” that determines the success of your practice, not the “how many” or “how much”).

Examples of this are seen in almost all levels of daily operations in the medical practice. The people who are answering the phones; One person can take 50 calls during the day, but be short, rude, take incomplete messages causing clinical staff to have to spend additional time following up, or in contrast maybe this person is answering 30 calls per day, but taking detailed messages, being patient and kind, and providing the patient with a better more customer service oriented impression of your practice. Maybe one physician sees 30 patients in a day, but spends limited time with them and patients feel as though the doctor and their staff rushed them in and out of the office, or didn’t spend the time to answer their questions and address their concerns- now this patient who came into the office with a medical concern feels worse than they did when they came into the office, left with a stack of papers and tests to schedule, confused and left with minimal guidance. That not only impacts the perception of your practice, but has a huge impact on the patient’s compliance and their health as a whole.

It is important to make sure that every member of your team takes a step back and recognize the impact of their actions in contrast with the way they are perceived; both by their co-workers and most important by your patients.

Food for thought; How do your actions and communication processes help or hinder the overall operations in your office? & what can you do to improve them?