Clintcast

Leadership involves the concept of role modeling in a big way. How you carry yourself has a direct relationship on how followers will follow you, and often how they in turn, lead others. As such, leadership starts with how you lead yourself and approach your own daily tasks. Learn some tips from Clint about ways to be a better role model, for yourself and others!

Home Care is a very important aspect along the healthcare continuum. As opposed to other types of facilities involving communities of patients, there is a different set of challenges and opportunities inherent when a patient is able to stay in their home. Today, Clint discusses some of those aspects as well as additional ways to capitalize on this region of healthcare, especially through partnerships.

Incontinence presents a constant challenge in healthcare settings. It is vital to address the issue head-on in a positive manner, as doing so can bring additional good reputation/customer service points beyond the primary goal to address the patient’s needs in the first place. Additionally, it may be an outward symptom of other underlying problems which need to be addressed with a patient, and hence, must be carefully tended to.

The healthcare profession is rampant with job transitions at all levels. With all these changes in position, it is not a surprise that this leads so often to confusion, apprehension and uncertainty throughout an organization on a continual basis. This can be avoided, however, with proper and diligent succession planning, both personally and at teaming levels to ensure ongoing quality throughout the transition.

As Clint has discussed in previous podcasts, the healthcare business is about giving of yourself without expectation of getting something in return beyond the satisfaction of a doing a job well done in making a difference. That being said, it does not however necessitate that you are always giving yourself away for free. There is a natural balance that can be achieved, but not by ‘keeping score’. Listen in!

While it may seem obvious, it is often an overlooked fact - YOU are responsible for safety in the workplace. Yes, there may be safety rules, regulations and practices in place, but it all starts with you making the conscious choice to be safety minded, to be aware of unsafe potentialities in yourself, others and your environment and to take vigilant actions to enforce safety in these realms.

A very important aspect of the act of teaming includes understanding budgets, even if you don’t necessarily have job responsibilities tied to budgeting tasks. When team members have a firm grasp on ‘where the money comes from’ and ‘where it goes’, they can better ensure their daily actions are in line with maximizing this lifeblood of the organization.

Human resources (our human assets)... it is our most valuable resource in healthcare. Despite the amazing cost in time and effort to hire, train and retain our healthcare workers, there is still a prevalent tendency out there to ‘eat our young’ (aka haze, mistreat, give a hard time to the very coworkers we also rely on to handle covering shifts and vacations, helping us out with patients, etc). It is time to put an end to this ritual!

Motivation is an internally generated driving force. It cannot come from the outside world. That being said, what things can you do to ensure you not only maintain the motivation you need, but you also promote a strong chance of success in the tasks you are motivated to accomplish? Clint gives 3 items to be aware of.

Even the most cheery of folks occasionally have days where the sky’s not as blue as normal. That’s okay! We’re all allowed these days. However, when the rain clouds become persistent, or worse yet, contagious, it is time to take action. Clint gives some hints to watch for.

In continual improvement efforts, it is great to feel you are making progress. However, how can you know for sure the impact you having? A great way to get some feedback information on your growth is to mystery shop yourself to see in an unbiased manner where you stand. Get some tips today!

Goal setting is a critical skill to success, both individually and as an organization. A common issue in this task is knowing where to ‘set the bar’ when deciding where the measure of success should lie at the end of the goal period. A good tactic is to stretch your goals just beyond where you think the edge of capability is. Listen in to find out why!

Given that people often spend more time with their work families than with their own families, it is great when you can share each other’s daily successes and lives with your work family in a positive way. However, it is critical to ensure that personal lives do not become a negative issue in the workplace. Clint discusses how to head this issue off.

As has been discussed in previous episodes, chronic givers (pleasaholics) can be a definite issue in organizations, however, these staff members are usually ‘reformable’. Chronic takers on the other hand, are very critical to deal with swiftly and completely, as the absence of a remedy will often rapidly lead to massive degradation in the organization. Learn what actions you must take to deal with this critical situation.

The healthcare profession is all about customer service. One area of delivering this service deals with handling incontinence. Aside from the basic service, regulatory and dignity issues, taking a strong stance on delivering excellence service in this area also benefits the organization and the employees as well. Learn how today!

Often an ‘employee of the month’ program will backfire as it can instead foster internal strife. Instead, Clint suggests utilizing employees (plural) of the month instead as you now have the opportunity to recognize and reward all employees who meet excellence criteria. Learn how this benefits the employees as well as the organization as a whole!

Technology is a vital aspect of healthcare today and will become even more so over the coming years. However, one must still be cautious to use technology in appropriate and mission supporting ways. It is great to find new, innovative ways to improve our customer service with technology, but we must do so in well-defined and proper manners.

In every team, you will have those who embrace change, those who will embrace it with some additional investigation, those who will rail against change and those in the middle who are still on a fence. Dealing with the first three groups can be fairly straightforward, but fence-sitters can be a challenge. Here are some tips to help bring these members onboard.

Leadership goes hand in hand with follower-ship. One requires the other. Similar to ‘pushing a rope’, leading by pushing followers is rarely successful. The idea is to discover how to pull the followers in a teaming manner in the desired direction so they participate in the effort and the success. Learn how!

Today, Clint discusses the future of reimbursements. Preferred partnerships are going to become an increasingly important aspect of our healthcare organizations as the government looks to simplify reimbursements and couple them with outcome based guarantees. Listen in as Clint follows the money!