contra point – for bjo – brazilian journal of ophthalmology

A moment of rapid transformations as the one we are living also requires from the healthcare professionals the acquisition and development not only of skills and knowledge in the medical field, but also the efficiently managing of their professional carriers.

This is not a very easy task, since it involves a large quantity of interlinked variables that must be managed in a competent and simultaneous way, once all the factors are inter-related and interfere in the functioning of the whole.

Within these variables we can include: forming a prepared collaborators’ team with high quality, maintenance and implementation of continuing educational programs for this team, adequate planning and structure of the clinic’s physical environment, planning and strategies for investments, relations with covenants, investment in medical training and formation, management of finances and human resources, investments in serving politics and in the customers’ loyalty, a fine tuning with the market’s news, a stable and satisfactory relationship with the medical class, have basic knowledge of legal issues within the medical field, and besides, we should worry to always keep the offered services within the ethical precepts, with a humanized and socio-environmental responsibility. We know today that, the awareness of quality includes the human aspect process.

But facing this complex equation, we must remember that its efficient solution depends on one question whose answer can be considered as basic in the determination of the paths that the doctor’s career will follow: What is the visual scope that this professional has of his career and the market?
We can say that this vision should have a considerable distance and coverage, so that he can be motivated for this continuous search of skills which will make him a better prepared professional to manage effectively his career, seeking professional success.

Professionals whose vision is very limited usually conduct their careers, taking decisions and making choices within this same logic. The result should also be situated inside this approach, as he has difficulties to assimilate and incorporate a wider and deeper vision of the actual needs of his business. Thus, even when in composing and preparing his collaborators team “he” ultimately winds up leading and reaching limited goals because of his “vision” range.

To successfully compete in this increasingly challenging market, the doctor should have a vision focused on searching high levels of success. This way, the managing strategies adopted in each area of the medical clinic will reflect the wide and well dimensioned vision of the manager.

In the book I wrote, “Management of the Medical Clinic – Developing and administrating high quality systems in serving the client”, I try, in the beginning of the book, to tune the reader with the market, through a short historical flashback of the striking facts which led the client and the market to be the way they are now, in an attempt to enlarge the reader’s view about this area. I believe that the effectiveness of any managing tool depends on ability of comprehending and using it. Thus, making the complex information network that composes the market more visible is the primordial step to enlarge the strategies’ scope of the managers.

After that, the book starts to present simple and effective managing tools in order to professionalize the way the clinic is conducted by its manager, tools which its use and effectiveness will depend largely on the comprehension extension of the healthcare professional who is ahead of the managing strategies of his clinic.

The healthcare market is heading towards an increasing competitive condition, with the constant addition of new variables which makes the managing task in an effective way each time more complex. In ophthalmology, this is a very remarkable characteristic that is intensely found in the Ophthalmologists’ lives in a very dynamic way, in a sense of heading progressively and constantly in demanding more from the professional at every day.

Despite this, there exist much room for optimism in having a concrete chance of succeeding, whose in heart rests a hectic look about the complex vastness that builds up the characteristics of this noble career.
Certainly, in the scope of this look there is one of the great forces that boost the doctor in managing efficiently and successfully his career.

References:

1. Moller, C. O lado humano da qualidade, Pioneira Thonson, São Paulo 2002.

2. Sandra E.D., Mac Graw, J.D., Benchmarking: New Measures of success. Administrative Eye Care, volume 8, number 2, Spring 1999.