Chiropractic Assistant Education Continued from Page 34 2. Is/are your current chiropractic assistant/assistants able to take time off for vacations or time away from work? In chiropractic, we tend to under- staff and don’t have any cover-off ability for our staff. Therefore, staff feel stuck in their jobs with limited flexibility, and this most certainly will lead to lack of retention. Staff require time off, just like we do. Practices fl ourish when there is a plan in place to allow people to take planned time off. 3. Is your chiropractic assistant feel- ing “overwhelmed” with current job du- ties and unable to do anything extra in your practice? I have previously written about the pyramid of training wherein staff moves from basic activities to more advanced duties, such as marketing, patient edu- cation, objective tests, health talks, etc. These advanced practice-building ac- tivities can only be done with an appro- priate staffi ng complement. When this doesn’t exist, staff will begin to feel over- whelmed, and job duties will not be car- ried out as effectively or effi ciently as we would like. An overwhelmed staff leads to an overwhelmed offi ce, which limits patient interaction and practice growth. 4. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Sometimes, as business owners, we feel responsible to do absolutely every- thing because we are afraid others won’t do it as well or correctly as we will. This is a dangerous place to be, in chiroprac- tic. Patients require 100 per cent of you, and when you feel overwhelmed, they do not get it. Well-trained staff exist, in our practices, to have lower priority activities delegated to priority activities, and to provide stability in our offices so that focus, for the DC, can be where it should be…that is, on the patient, and the growth of the business. If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, it may be time to con- sider either hiring a chiropractic health assistant – if you don’t have one – or add- ing to your current staffing complement. In this time of perceived economic stress, rather than retreating and “hunkering” down, this is a time to make well-in- formed business decisions about the big- gest resources we have in our practice – our teams. www.canadianchiropractor.ca CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | SEPTEMBER 2009 • 37 In chiropractic, we often talk about staff as a business “expense.” Today, I want to challenge you to consider that hiring, and retaining, of staff is actually an investment. I, like many of you, have previously made “bad” investments with staff. These have actually “cost” our busi- ness. When I began to invest in the right staff, establish a stable team and then continue to invest in the team, our busi- ness fl ourished. Just like any well- timed, right investment, chiropractic assistants will provide tenfold what we invest in them, given the opportunity. John Maxwell, author of The 21 Ir- refutable Laws of Leadership, stated this principle well. “Hire the best staff you can fi nd, develop them as much as you can, and hand off everything you possi- bly can to them.” Chiropractic demands the best of us, and we are in a time when our public needs more of us. If you ask me whether you can afford staff or afford to add staff, I will ask you, “Can you afford not to?” •
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor September 2009: Page 37
