The Practice Success Prescription: Team-Based Veterinary Healthcare Delivery by Drs. Leak. Morris Humphries
Thomas E. Catanzaro, DVM, MHA, FACHE, DACHE
Refer back to Figure 23 as it relates to the following information.
Basic Standards
Each zone starts orientation and training for everyone, modifying the format to meet the practice's unique needs, and assigning a trainer to every task. Every zone member must train at least one task in each phase, to ensure harmony and integration of the new candidate.
Team moves together through the four phases of the Orientation & Training monograph and then the five phases of the Zone Systems & Schedules training plan. If both are attempted at the same time, see Figure 23 above for integration expectations.
The medical director has led the development of the standards of care, embracing the inviolate core values, and ensures all members of the practice's healthcare delivery team are fully aware and support the outcome expectations.
The medical director has coordinated with the training coordinator, and/or individual zone coordinators, to ensure each zone has duty standards and outcome expectations compatible with the vision, core values, standards of care, mission focus and continuity of care goals of the practice:
Client access is the key to shifts and schedules.
Staff scheduling comes after the client access and support plan.
Doctors are scheduled to meet community access needs and then client access needs, each remaining a patient advocate at all times.
Doctors respect staff scheduling, client scheduling, and practice scheduling, and commit to "staying on time" with all zones and shifts.
Anyone may call a "time out", when they see an apparent violation of core values, standards of care, mission focus, or system respect. This requires a "real time", same-day/same-shift resolution, behind closed doors, with the administrator and/or medical director.
Each zone must have trained to "excellence" (trust), with each member of the zone, before moving to next training phase.
Doctors approve completion of phases for OPNT and IPNT zones by clearly stating in public, "We trust you at this skill level!"
Practice administrator/manager approves completion of phases for client relations and animal caretakers.
Practice manager checks-off the doctors' phase completions, and ensures all zones progress at the same pace. One zone's training cannot get ahead of another zone's, since cross-zone referrals increase in the later phases.
Five-zone, five-phase training plans are in the appendices of the VCI® Signature Series Monograph Systems & Schedules.
Tools for program planning by program managers can be found in the VCI® Signature Series Monograph Leadership Action Planner.
Note: When Phase 1 is completed by each zone, and the doctors have said, "We trust you at this skill level!", each zone element is now ready to repeat the same sequence for each of the other four phases.
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Leadership Note: The new atmosphere is unique and the coordinators are fragile. The wrong leadership comment can "derail" the best of intentions. Once an item has been delegated, it cannot be taken back. The person may be mentored, but coaching came before delegation. See situational leadership issues related in the VCI® Signature Series Monograph Leadership Principles and Skills.
The fourteen leadership skills should have been integrated during the "Orientation & Training" program, yet there is usually a need to revisit the skills with coordinators and doctors to ensure they understand each of the skills and how they affect the staff, practice, and client perceptions.
In "Group Development", another leadership skill from Building the Successful Veterinary Practice: Leadership Tools, please remember that each new person and each new task will send the group back to the forming stage, and it will be followed by the storming phase. The leadership's vision and core values will be tested regularly. Remain calm and consistent for best results, and remember, the best answer is usually a question, followed by listening, and then an accolade for the response given. |
Zone Staff Training Sequence is on Coordinators' Agenda
Coordinators discuss each zone's Phase 1.
Resources needed are identified and located.
In larger practices, a training coordinator may be identified, and if so, must be supported by coordinators and leadership alike.
Time line begins as coordinators plan process and set goals.
Zone Meeting
Coordinator taps into the resources within the zone, as this mini-team begins brainstorming for mind-mapping their Phase 1, explained in Building The Successful Veterinary Practice: Innovation & Creativity.
After mind-mapping is completed, the zone team needs to prioritize steps needed for implementation.
Additional resources are identified.
Remember the vision and core values, supporting the operational principles, of the VCI® Signature Series Monograph Leadership Action Planner.
Leadership Awareness and the "Winning Ways"
The "winning way" is to have a vision statement that excites the heart and clearly sits on the horizon in front of the practice.
The "winning way" is to establish inviolate core values, which allow all team members to make decisions within a "safe haven" atmosphere.
The "winning way" is to have consistent standards of care, which embrace the cutting edge of wellness surveillance, as well as preventive and curative medicine.
The "winning way" is to ensure coordinators understand they are not "supervisors" and that each member of the team is accountable for one's own competency and productivity. Coordinators facilitate open discussions and feedback, ensure resources are available, support the training initiatives, and maintain awareness of the core values and standards of care.
The "winning way" is to embrace the delegation process for outcomes, rather than just process. Continuous quality improvement must be a concurrent expectation within each zone for each team member.
The "winning way" is to understand that the basic individual training and team development programs lead into larger and more complex development systems, as reflected in the VCI® Signature Series Monograph Models & Methods that Drive Breakthrough Performance, a reference designed for only the top forty percent of veterinary practices in America today.