Editor's Letter

• Editor's Letter (467.8 KB)

Over coffee, my friend told me a harrowing tale of subterfuge and drama that involved the firing of a long-time employee at her practice.

She described the camps that had formed over the years of this toxic employee’s reign, creating an “us versus them” mentality that permeated the entire practice. This self-designated dictator had run off several good employees and had most of the doctors browbeaten. Needless to say, following the correct legal and ethical course of action and enforcing appropriate boundaries with this employee had been an exhausting struggle. My friend confided that she had gone home many nights in tears and considered leaving the practice, just to escape the malicious environment. Now that the toxic employee was gone, she was ready to move forward and help her team heal. She just wasn’t sure how to do it.

It is stories like this one that prompted our theme this month. How do you come back from the brink when your practice has suffered a near mortal blow? How do you get your team to stand up, brush themselves off, and look to the future? We hope the articles contained in this issue will give you concrete and realistic ideas to help you recover and start again.

Sally Starbuck Stamp shares tips on how to recover from the drama and upset experienced by my friend in When Goodbye Isn’t Enough, while The Secrets of Successful Conflict Resolution provides techniques for resolving personality clashes before they escalate into costly and time-consuming conflicts. Attorney Douglas Jack shares his wisdom gleaned from many years of defending veterinarians and offers 3 strategies for avoiding malpractice suits.

In the “what do you do when” category, Erin Allen and Dr. Jane R. Shaw guide you through how to communicate a medical error to a client. And last but certainly not least, Dr. Bill Kearley describes the most helpful strategies to employ when you have a crying employee on your hands.

Each of these issues mark minor and major traumatic events that change the course of how we work and how we view work. They certainly alter business as usual, but they don’t have to send you over the edge. We hope the insights provided to you in these articles guide your march back to safe ground!

Sincerely,

Kathy Ruby, PhD
Editor in Chief