equipment suppliers.
and procedures have you
implemented?
Policy & Procedures, a General
Operations Manual, a Practice
Operations Manual, an Emergency
Response Procedures Manual and
an Archive File Register.
Procedures, Hand Hygiene, CPR,
Fire Safety, Product Training, email
advice and discussions around
process improvement.
take for a practice to succeed in
the highly competitive cosmetic
medicine arena?
practice and be good at what
you do. Many look at cosmetic
medicine as an easy offshoot of
another part of medicine, but it's
not something that just anyone can
do well one needs to have an
aptitude for cosmetic medicine to
get good results and have
people return.
discounting will generate patients
who are impulsive and price-driven,
and may not return. Such practices
tend to come and go it's like
`supermarket' medicine.
be an ethical base with a focus on
the patient and giving them results.
extremely loyal and become long-
term `friends'. The most loyal are
actually those who tried somewhere
else and regretted the change, and
returned never to leave again!
practice manager to your
business?
started to grow we realised that
we needed much more in the way
of management. Our practice
manager, Christine Malone, was
very willing to learn all she could,
so we sent her to do a Diploma
in Practice Management at New
England University. Although
she has always been extremely
competent and a great asset to our
business, Christine says the course
made her aware of the things she
wasn't doing and it has given her
greater confidence.
your work?
meet every day, and for me it's
the evolution of those people that
you see over time, the honing of
techniques to individuals and the
feedback I get. I'm constantly
inspired by the changes one can
make in people's lives by changing
something in their appearance that
may be holding them back. It's
nice when you've seen people for
25-plus years and they are looking
and feeling fantastic, and you know
you've had a part in that.
are constantly new techniques and
new pieces of equipment coming
out, so it's necessary to remain
up to date. I go to two or three
conferences a year, in Australia
an overseas, and I'm constantly
attending workshops, some of
which I present.
Private Practice Succession
Planning Workshop did you
learn anything that could be
applied to your practice?
other doctors (provided they are
suitable), could be brought in, with
a view to ultimately taking over
the practice. It would be hard for
anyone to set this sort of practice
up from scratch it takes so
much organisation and so much
equipment. We have a ready-to-go,
extremely functional organisation
but it would be very expensive for
someone to just buy straight out.
The workshop showed how
it would be feasible for someone
to ease in.