For many Medical Practitioners, running their own Medical Aesthetic Clinic is a job that allows no time off. Some practitioners not only carry out treatments, but also deal with all the other aspects of running the business, like receiving phone calls, and messages, providing patients with information, following them up, offering post-treatment care and more. Dealing with all this inefficiently can lead to serious problems like job burnout, anxiety, and exhaustion.
To help you avoid this situation, we have put together some suggestions to help improve your time management and, as a result, better the performance of your clinic and provide you with mental comfort.
1. Focus on one thing at a time
Duties other than treating patients must be fulfilled for the clinic to run smoothly. However, they must be handled in an organised manner.
Establishing a routine at work that is easy to follow is the first step to good time management. If you do not implement a fixed workflow, you will never get rid of the sense of chaos and disorganisation.
It is a good practice to dedicate certain hours or even whole days to specific purposes. On Mondays, for example, you can devote a few hours to contacting potential patients, confirming appointments, or answering questions. That way, you can spend the rest of the week accomplishing other tasks and committing to them fully.
2. Appreciate calendars
Have you ever given up writing something down because you were convinced you would remember it? This strategy may work once or twice, but certainly not when you run your own practice! By putting data into your calendar and marking how long a particular task will take, you will avoid mistakes and nothing will slip your memory. Reviewing your calendar afterwards will also allow you to see what you can change in the future to make your clinic more efficient.
Apart from calendars, we suggest learning more about the top online booking systems for medical aesthetic practitioners that will improve your business.
3. Make prioritising a priority
Not all tasks at work are equally important. We tend to start with quicker and easier projects and then often run out of time or energy for the more challenging ones. It is a good idea to use The Eisenhower Matrix- a simple system to help you decide which tasks are a priority. In this method, you group projects based on 2 factors – urgency and importance of the task. Then, you write down 4 possible approaches to the task in a diagram.
Urgent and important:
Tasks that prevent further action and require an immediate response will be placed in the "urgent" and "important" category. To explain this process better, let's look at an example: if there is a power failure in your clinic, performing treatments and communicating with patients are impossible. Therefore, you need to solve this problem as soon as possible.
Urgent and non-important:
The “urgent” and “less important” category includes all tasks that you do not have to perform personally but are an essential part of the clinic's operation. Running the clinic's social media profile, for example, can be delegated.
Important and non-urgent:
For the “important” but “non-urgent” category, the appropriate approach is to plan. It is a good approach to time-consuming projects that do not have a firm deadline, such as a refurbishment of a clinic.
Non-important and non-urgent:
The last category is non-important and non-urgent tasks. These you can simply remove from your list and return to them in the future.
4. You do not have to do everything yourself
"If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself"- how many times in your life have you heard these words? The good news is that The Eisenhower Matrix shows that it is not always the case. Delegating an area of work to an employee or even hiring someone new allows you to focus on performing beauty procedures, which is the most important after all.
Running your clinic's social media profile, for example, can be very beneficial, but also takes a lot of time and dedication. In this case, hiring a freelancer to do this will save you a lot of time and, in addition, it can generate extra sales in the clinic.
5. Maintain a healthy work-life balance
People are not machines, and today's fast pace of life makes it easy to forget. To be able to function properly, you need a break that ensures relief not only for your body but also for your mind. It is good practice to eliminate answering phone calls or messages after working hours or on holidays. To make this possible, you can benefit from services that can take care of the communication with the potential patient.
We will provide more information about this type of support later in this article. Time with family and friends, physical activity, and hobbies will help you relax and increase your level of well-being. This, in turn, will allow you to work in greater peace and enjoy your life outside work.
6. Use InDesk- the new patient management system
What if we told you that there is a simple solution to your time-management issues? We know that the guidelines above require effort to put into practice. Therefore, to make your life easier we present InDesk, a new patient contact service for Medical Aesthetics Clinics- a better alternative to the traditional front desk receptionist. Since we have over a decade of experience in working with clinics and patients, we have developed a tried and tested system for acquiring new clients. Our agents do not only pick up phones, but they also have comprehensive knowledge of Aesthetic Medicine treatments.
InDesk will act as an intermediary between the potential patient and your clinic, allowing you to concentrate fully on your treatments. This service handles inbound enquiries by phone, email, and does much more. Our agents will call back your prospective patients, answer their queries, acquire images for consultation, and even qualify patients for treatments. Here you can learn more about benefits of outsourcing clinic's reception.
Sounds good? Do not compromise. Trust InDesk- trust professionals.