There are three critical issues in establishing trust between healthcare administration and doctors; Communication, Respect and Awareness. Communication is critical and needs to be established early in the administration to physician relationship. Administrators need to find out what the physicians need and how the administrators can meet those needs. The approach and delivery of communication will be just as important and should be an ongoing process with established meeting schedules that are consistent. We found it convenient to meet with staff physicians early in the morning once a month. This afforded the staff the opportunity to start the meeting with a fresh perspective that was not clouded with the stressors that normally occur at the end of a busy work day. We also made sure that we had an agenda that was presented to the attendees prior to the meeting so they were aware of what action items would be discussed.
Mutual respect of time, knowledge, mission and goals is necessary for trust to be established between administrators and physicians. Garelick and Fagan describes “a retreat to a ‘them’ and ‘us’ position”, which leads to sour relationships between doctors and management. This supports Leebov’s tips to avoid with “turning your staff against a physician”. Both sides need to work together and respect the roles and contributions each side can offer to meet the mission and goals of the facility and the physician. Finally, awareness is important to establish trust between administration and physicians. Awareness of the situation and relationship should be maintained at all times. As Leebov stated in her article, “take the physician’s pulse regularly” is necessary to build trust between administration and physicians. We’ve found it helpful to send out short surveys that consist of no more than 5 questions to gauge how our service is to our referring staff. We also created a new position in our department as a primary liaison between our administrators and our staff physicians. This prevents us from slipping on our awareness and it also affords us the opportunity to reassess and make changes to accommodate the needs of the physicians. Many physician responsibilities include those imposed by their licensure, their malpractice insurance and guidelines established by their place of business. The responsibility of a physician is to provide compassionate, ethical and proper treatment for the patients.
The relationship between a patient and her physician must be predicated on trust. Medical records cannot be shared with anyone without the patient’s express authorization unless ordered by a judicial court. A physician must be able to hear everything a patient says without judgment. A physician must be able to dispense medical advice, medical recommendations and medical care without dispensing personal judgment or attacks on the patient. In cases of suspected abuse (child or spousal), the physician may send the patient to the emergency room where skilled social workers may evaluate the problem. A physician may, on a case-by-case basis, notice certain patterns indicating abuse and may report the abuse to Child Protective Services for investigation Therefore; a physician is more like a stepping stone toward the initiation, retention, and controlling of the hospital.
