2017: You Say You Want A Resolution

“You say you want a resolution” … I borrowed and paraphrased a line from a famous Beatles song for my final DPM Blog of 2016. With the end of another year quickly approaching, we are reminded once again that it is time for those inescapable New Year’s resolutions. I like to believe it is kind of a culturally imposed deadline to make a positive change in your life and/or practice.

I would also like to believe that most of us are optimists, meaning we want to start the New Year off right and make a resolution that moves the needle forward. First decide if you are seeking a “result from the change” or “change as the result.” Are you still with me? Do not try to eat the whole elephant in one bite. Limit your resolutions and gauge the risk to benefit ratio. Start small and build on success. Understand that a morning workout program as part of a healthier lifestyle means getting out of bed earlier. Yikes! A pledge to come into work with a better attitude is a daily habit, not just when you feel like it. Increasing your patient load means more of your time and effort, and maybe a bigger marketing budget.

Truth is, according to Huffington Post, only 19 percent of us keep our New Year’s resolutions.¹ Forbes has it at 8 percent.² If you’re interested, Statistic Brain has compiled additional interesting stats involving the average lengths of time that people actually keep their resolutions as well as overall success rates.³ The data exists and the question remains: Why is sticking to resolutions such an epic fail?

I suppose psychiatrists would claim there are a number of deep-seated, psychological reasons for why our resolutions fail. The way I see it, however, is that our resolutions end up being nothing more than wishes and unless we possess a magic wand, wishes only really come true in fairy tales. Want this year to be different? Create actual step-by-step plans to bring your resolution, personal or professional, to resolution.

For example, let’s take the resolution “increasing your patient load.” Just saying you want to see more patients will not make it happen. Ask yourself what specifically needs to take place for this to happen. By using a simple action plan tool, some facts and past experiences, you can outline a step-by-step plan …

Step 1: Examine your schedule and identify what is not working. For example, do you triage patients poorly and place them in the schedule improperly?

Step 2: Assign a specific amount of time to each of your procedures. Newsflash: Not every patient takes 15 minutes to see.

Step 3: Review any changes made to the schedule afterward to see if they worked. If not, try something different. If it’s broken, fix it.

Step 4: Schedule time to train clinical staff so you can eventually (and confidently) offload some patient care tasks onto them.

Step 5: Evaluate where backups most often occur (treatment room, reception area, check-in, check-out?) and address them by changing from wishy-washy systems to more consistent ones. You can do this via a simple time and motion study. Since most electronic medical records (EMR) systems now track timing (when patients come in, when you take them back, when they see a doctor, when they check out), gridlocks are fairly easy to identify.

Ditching old habits for new ones is not easy and can be overwhelming. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Assign steps to team members capable of carrying the task out and have them report to you on their progress by a certain deadline, perhaps by your next staff meeting. Experience has shown that staff want to participate, especially if the outcome demonstrates all-around improvement and is celebrated as a team.

If you believe that we are each responsible for our own success, then T.S. Eliot was onto something when he said, “Sometimes, things become possible if we want them bad enough.” How bad do you want it? If that is not enough to inspire you to start 2017 on a new foot, maybe these words left to us by the late, great John Lennon will: “Don’t you know it’s gonna be … all right, all right, all right.” Happy new year!

References

1. Ufberg M. It’s normal to be terrible at keeping New Year’s resolutions. Huffington Post. Available at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/01/bad-new-years-resolutions_n_6401180.html . Published Jan. 1, 2015.

2. Diamond D. Just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions. Here’s how they do it. Forbes. Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/01/01/just-8-of-people-achieve-their-new-years-resolutions-heres-how-they-did-it/#32a7ae7f304c . Published Jan. 1, 2013.

3. New year’s resolution statistics. Statistic Brain. Available at https://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/ .