CAD/CAM international magazine of digital dentistry

38 I I practice management _ communication Think about how you communicate with others withintheofficeonadailybasis.Thekeyistorecog- nisethatnotallcommunicationisverbal.Reflecton howinformationisprocessed,received,transferred, and stored within your company. Then reflect on whether those processes are effective and if every- thing is being communicated the way it should be. With patients, think about how you and your staff come across. Do patients generally have a good sense of what they’re getting into when they come to your office? Are they aware of after-care proce- dures and processes? Do they ever seem confused? Ask yourself these questions and consider asking patients how they feel about your office. If you’re not communicating what you’d like to with your patients,therearedefinitelythingsyoucouldtweak in order to be more effective on that front. There is a well-known theory in the business- marketing world regarding how information is communicated in a business context. Let’s say you have a certain concept you want to communicate to someone. You communicate it to them. They hear a certain concept and act upon it. Those are the three main parts of the communication of a message. The interesting thing is that the message that you intended to communicate is not always the same message that is received. How closely these two align is determined by the medium and modeofcommunicationthatyouuse.Information can be communicated in a variety of ways within the office. Let me review some of the more com- mon ones briefly. Inperson Officesarefast-pacedenvironmentsand,frank- ly, written communication is slow. One of the most common forms of communication in the office environment is oral communication. Speaking with your reception staff, hygienist, or assistant is usu- ally the fastest way to get information across. However, there is one problem with relying on oral communication alone: it’s notoriously unreliable. People mumble, mishear things, tune out, don’t writethingsdown,andforget. Oralcommunication can thus lead to misunderstandings moreso than anyotherformofcommunication.Anotherconcern is that oral communication isn’t recorded. Unless someonewritesdownwhatissaid,thereisnorecord of it. This can play havoc in internal work relation- shipsandcanleadtoanineffectiveprocessinsome cases. Of course, there are times when oral com- munication works better than anything else (for example, in the operatory), but there are a number of cases in which oral communication should be convertedtosomethingmorepermanentoratleast written down. An example would be asking your reception staff to refer a patient to a specialist. If the request is made orally, staff may forget, the doctor may think that he’s made the request when he hasn’t, and the request could fall through the cracks of the endless stream of office paperwork. An alternative may be to use e-mail or have a writ- ten note taken on the spot. This is just one example ofhowcommunicationinyourofficecouldbemade more efficient. It also leads us to the next type of office communication. Writtencommunication Written communication can take on many dif- ferent forms. Paper notes, e-mails, faxes, various feedbackandconsentforms,andevenPost-itnotes areallexamplesofwrittencommunicationthatyou may see in your office space. Unlike oral communi- cation, written communication is more permanent and provides a record of what was communicated throughout the office, making it a desirable com- municationform.Theonlyproblemwithitisthatit’s slow and can easily be misinterpreted. Messy hand- writing,short-forms,andabsenceoftoneandbody language can all lead to a written note being misin- terpreted.However,thishappensfarlessoftenthan with oral communication because there is a paper trail. People can ask for clarification, check things thathappenedpreviously,andgainabettersenseof whatthenoteisaboutfromsupportingdocuments, other staff or other notes. This is the form of com- CAD/CAM 3_2012