How did you feel when you started your practice? If you were like most people, you likely felt so anxious and nervous that you couldn’t sleep the night before your first day.
We’ve all felt this way when we’re starting a new job, it’s a normal feeling that some experts believe dates back thousands of years.
According to associate professor of organizational behavior at Babson College, Keith Rollag, “During the hunter-gatherer days, encountering a stranger usually occurred when you were moving into another tribe’s territory, and that was stressful and potentially dangerous.”
Obviously, we’re no longer in a world where we only meet a handful of people in our lifetime. Present-day humans may encounter thousands of people at a conference or at a baseball game. But those feelings happened so long ago that they’re essentially a part of who we are as a species.
OK, I’m not a biologist so my rant about Homosapien genes and lineage is over.
The point I’m trying to make is; if everyone’s anxious when they first start a new job then the new doctor you hired probably feels the same way. Whether they’re a seasoned healthcare professional or a recent college graduate, they’re worried about their new job.
From your perspective, you’re excited. After a long hiring process consisting of multiple phases, hundreds of questions, and thousands of hours you found the perfect candidate to fill the empty spot in your practice.
The last thing you want after all of that work is to lose your new employee because of new job anxiety.
Luckily, there are certain things you can do to welcome a new doctor to your practice that will calm their anxiety and ensure that they’re as excited as you are that they’re starting.
Table of Contents
Create a Welcome Kit
Everyone likes free stuff.
Getting a new job leads to a mixed bag of both anxious and excited feelings. But through all of that, they want to represent your practice.
If you’re a modern practice, you more than likely have some swag or promotional items lying around that you give to your patients.
Take a couple of those items, bundle them together with a gift card to a favorable restaurant most people like and place it at their workstation as a welcoming kit.
A lot of companies already provide these gift baskets to their newest team members but a great example of one is talent acquisition software company, Workable.
They personalize each of their employee welcome kits with different things that go beyond the standard coffee thermos and t-shirt. In the example above, they got their new editor a copy of the book Writing Without Bullshit not because of a silly reason like their CEO wrote but because they believe it’s a great introduction to the team’s editing philosophy.
Creating a welcome kit is a step in the right direction, but personalizing it is even better.
Announce Their New Position
Welcoming a new doctor to your practice starts before they’ve come in for their first day.
After you’ve run their background check, sent them their offer letter, officially hired them, and established their first start date, it’s time to announce it.
There are a lot of different ways to announce that they’re starting…
Through your website
As a mailed letter
On social media
As a well-produced video
As a press release
You’re not limited to only choosing one of those options. You can mix and match them based on which methods will resonate best with your patients.
I recommend using all of them or as many as possible because this type of content does nothing but reflect positively on your practice. Of course, doing all of these things indirectly increases your online presence. However, that goes beyond the scope of this blog post.
So let’s focus on how they help the welcoming process.
First, I’ll breakdown the positive aspects of the online announcements. Each of those options open up the door to getting positive feedback from your patients.
Whether it’s through likes or comments, your patients have the chance to express their excitement about the new doctor.
Even a simple comment from one of your patients or another coworker on your announcement post might be enough to make your new employee feel welcomed. Receiving social media engagement is a positive experience.
In fact, 89 percent of people say that getting likes on social media makes them happy.
The above video is a great example of welcoming a new doctor in a video format. In the video, ChristiMD Medical Group welcomes Dr. Lauren Underwood to their practice. They don’t use any crazy effects, transitions, or cameras. It’s a simple video where Dr. Christi introduces and interviews the newest doctor at her practice.
A patient of their practice even made a positive comment about Dr. Underwood.
Second, let’s realize what happens from sending physical announcement letters. In order to see the most success with this, you’ll have to plan a few weeks in advance to accommodate for the mailing process.
However, whether you get the timing right or not, you’re patients will be more likely to welcome your new doctor in person by sending letters. Think about it, your patients will get excited when they read the announcement letter and then carry that excitement over to the next appointment they have with you.
By making the announcement online and physically you’re encouraging both instant and in-person, positive feedback. Thus, your new doctor will feel welcomed before their first day and throughout their first through months.
Introduce Them The Right Way
This may seem like an obvious process to do with your new doctor on the first day. It’s also highly likely you already do this will all of your new staff, regardless of their title.
Although practically every organization does it, how significant is this process at your practice?
Think about the last time you introduced your newest staff member. Did your existing employees…
Seem engaged in the conversation?
Act as though they were too busy to meet their new coworker?
Introduce themself in a professional manner?
Each of those are important aspects to keep in mind when you’re walking your new doctor through your practice to introduce them to other staff members.
This is one of the most important processes involved in the entire welcoming process.
In a previous blog post, I mentioned how influential first impressions are to your new patients.
That same idea carries over in this piece as well. How your other staff members first interact with the new doctor at your practice not only establishes for how their relationship will be in the future, but also establishes their overall sense of your organization’s culture.
For example, if your staff was more interested in the work they were doing than meeting their new team member then it comes off that your organization only cares about output.
If that’s the case then your new doctor will not only continue to have their anxiety, but also regret accepting the position.
Over one-third of all employees consider leaving a position due to a culture mismatch.
To ensure that first impressions and introductions throughout your office go as smoothly as possible, emphasize their importance with your existing team. Pull them together during downtime and talk about the kind of atmosphere you’re trying to establish.
Remember Their Name
This goes without saying, but remembering your new doctor’s name is something you and your team should prioritize.
Between an industry-standard turnover rate and the fact that you’re a growing practice, you need to hire new employees. Although this is great, it makes it a little bit harder for you and your team to remember the names of all of your new faces.
Your new hires understand that this is an innocent and unintentional mistake, right? People mess up each other's names all of the time.
According to psychology research, when you’ve forgotten someone’s name it tells them that either you weren’t interested or invested to remember them.
That’s not something you want your new hires to feel, regardless of their title.
So what can you do to better remember new doctors’ names?
Well, besides staying present during introductions, one of the best ways to remember anyone’s name is to repeat it. I’m not saying you should stand there and repeat their name 5 times in a row after they’ve introduced themselves.
Instead, what I mean is to repeat it in a normal way. Right after they’ve said their introduction to you, respond but also throw their name in.
For example, if the new doctor’s name is William say, “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, William.”
How easy is that?
It’s not a hard process and it will benefit you tremendously in remembering the names of all of your new employees. This way of remembering is something that’s teachable to your entire workforce as well.
If you struggle with names, I’m sure that there are a few folks within your organization that do as well. Teach this to them and make your new hires understand their importance.
Take Them to Lunch
The events that happen on the first day a new doctor starts at your practice sets the tone for how welcomed they’ll feel.
They have a lot to take in during the first four hours at their new job. Their first half of their day is overwhelming between the paperwork, tour, introductions, and HIPAA training courses.
It’s also more than likely that they won’t feel a part of the team just yet either. But what if I told you this mentality could change after a 60-minute break?
All you have to do is take your new doctor to lunch with the team.
“Breaking bread” with new members of your workforce is not only helpful in transitioning them to a team member, but it also helps you accomplish practice goals.
A Cornell University study found that eating together as a team helps…
Improve collaboration
Increase productivity
So with that in mind, make team lunches a priority of yours. Even consider holding them once in a while regardless of whether or not you’ve hired someone new.
Establish Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
After their first week, they’re ready to metaphorically get their hands dirty and begin to work through their job’s objectives. In other words, they’ve gone through most of if not all of the training material, met all of your existing staff, and shadowed some of your key team members.
At this point, it’s towards the end of the workweek and they’re ready to roll into their upcoming day-to-day responsibilities.
This is the perfect time to sit down with them and establish short term and long term goals.
By setting goals with your new doctor, they’re naturally going to put their mind to them if they’re a driven individual.
Although long term goals take a longer amount of time and commitment to achieve, establishing them accomplishes two things. First, it gives your new doctor a challenge to strive to succeed. Second, it tells them that you’re not planning on laying them off anytime soon.
Most people aren’t going to think that you’re going to lay them off the moment you hire them. However, that thought might still be in the back of their mind. But by setting long term goals with them, you’re telling them that you plan on investing your time and resources on growing their career with your practice.
Setting any kind of goal is a win-win situation. It motivates and instills a sense of security that also happens to boost the success of your organization over time.
Conclusion
You’ve picked the perfect candidate to fill the empty position within your practice. Their first day is coming up and you want to make them feel as welcomed as possible.
After all, you’re investing a lot of time and resources into your new employee and want them to reciprocate value through their work.
But in order to start out on the right foot, you need to make this new doctor feel welcomed. This process starts before they’ve even stepped into your practice for their first day and continues throughout their tenure at your organization.
Luckily, making them feel a part of the team isn’t very difficult and small gestures go a long way.
