managing a medical clinic: the challenge of success

To reflect about “being a doctor” nowadays is a very complex task, once the answers for this reflection relies on historical events that, over time, transformed dramatically the behaviors, habits and costumes of the individuals and social groups.

So, the clients who come to the clinics today are constantly surprising us with new situations and questionings, this shows that the clients’ traits are growing in a direction of change, in other words, this client is learning every day to be more and more questioning and sure of what he is seeking in a certain service.

This way, the requirements of a doctor as a professional, who in most cases is the manager of his clinic, are found in an ascending line pointing for the need of being prepared not only with knowledge in medicine, but also provide himself with information and tools that help him in managing his clinic.

When writing the book “Managing Medical Clinics”, I tried to sequence and present information that could lead the professionals in the health area who are responsible for managing their clinics to, at a first thought, through a quick and objective historical flashback, understand why the client have the behaviors and requirements that we observe, and afterwards, present information, orientations, simple and efficient techniques and tools that can be used by the clinics’ managers.

In this book, the doctor or another manager for the clinic will have information about the clients’ behavior, techniques to hire, train, motivate, in addition to apply concepts of continuing education.

Managing the client’s perception of time, professional image, and serving techniques are other subjects which were also addressed in the book. To finalize, a list of “serving pearls”, that constitutes of a series of short stories which report real events of the daily work at clinics, that I collected along the last years with the help of various collaborators around the country.

We can perceive from the daily work at clinics, how much the team of employees who work with the doctor needs to be prepared and tuned for this market, providing high quality services and adding up positive values to the doctor’s work. But this is not an easy task.

A good staff starts with the efficient hiring of each new collaborator. And this is the entry door of the collaborators of the clinics’ staff, so, let’s hold a little more on this subject.

In the medical clinics, it is common for the own doctor to select the candidate to be hired. Bearing in mind these area’s characteristics, we can conclude that a simple, affordable and effective selection process is needed, that doesn’t need to involve very complex selection techniques that would ultimately become unviable for most of the clinics.

The selection interview, despite of the subjectivity and uncertainty in the analysis of most obtained data, it is still a valid and adequate instrument in the selective process inside medical clinics.

The interview consists of a “face to face” investigation method, an interaction process, where the clinic’s interviewer will be in front of the potential candidate to the available job and will check the information given in the candidate’s curriculum, compare data, try to learn aspects related to the personality and general behavior of the candidate


In a first moment it seems to be simple to interview a candidate and take the decision about hiring or not, but in a deeper look it shows that this is a process of great complexity.

We must remember that the final objective of an interview is predicting behavior, that is, starting from the obtained information and from the interpretation of this information by the interviewer, he does a “preview” of the future behavior, and chooses the one that has greater chances to be the collaborator that was being searched.

It’s not rare that the predicting turns out to be erroneous along the daily work, where that one who appeared to be the ideal, in fact prove to be inadequate for the job he was hired. At this moment, the interviewer inevitably asks himself: How I didn’t notice this during the selection? How was I this much mistaken?

The answer for these questions in most cases is in the lack of preparation of the interviewer. Interview requires technical observation, questioning, managing capabilities, analysis and interpretation of the obtained information.

Thus, the organization and methodology of the process has a fundamental importance so that the margin of succeeding is the best possible.

Information so that candidates who want to learn how to behave, dress up, talk, react to questions in order to impress positively the interviewer are freely available in books, on the Internet, magazines and newspapers. The candidates learn the basic ways that will be covered during the interview and they have the chance to prepare themselves to impress the interviewer in order to improve their chances of being hired.

Many times, there are better prepared candidates to be interviewed than interviewers to interview. Take a look ate the following sentence taken from a site:

“Look in the eyes of the interviewer – When facing him you will transmit confidence and create empathy”
Fonte: www.carreiras.empregos.com.br
The selection interview is a technique that has its potentials and limitations. We can say that the greatest instrument of an interview is the interviewer itself, that through his abilities, knowledge, perceptions, posture and personality will determine the success of this procedure.

The ways to an efficient Manage of clinics are many and certainly asks from the manager a large and fine preparation with the market requirements. This is not an easy task, but it is not impossible, so, the search for knowledge that leads to effectiveness in this sector is for sure a viable and necessary alternative.

I would like this book to be a guide to orient and show some paths for professionals in the healthcare field who consider the excellence and professionalism of the provided service important, not only from the doctor’s side, but also from his staff.