Don't overlook the 'it factor' when hiring medical office employees

A lot of times, readers and sources ask us health writers about our background, and particularly whether it includes anything having to do with medicine. Usually, I don't count my two years toward a four-year nursing degree as relevant. But today, it serves as a potent example of how someone who quantitatively has all the qualifications to do a job can be wildly inept to execute it.

Unlike most of my classmates answering the call of the healthcare profession, the rigorous academic demands of the nursing program didn't daunt me. Microbiology? Bring it. Organic chemistry? Piece of cake. Play darts with a hypodermic needle and a stranger's buttocks? Uh-oh. Each and every Thursday morning of my first (and only) clinical rotation, I prayed to spend the day trapped in a broken elevator. After 10 dismayed weeks of safe delivery to the floor where this highly supervised training occurred, I went home and announced I was changing my major to English.

When trying to explain the switch (and what in the world I supposed I might do with a bachelor's degree in my native language), my answer was that I just didn't have what it took to be a nurse; though I couldn't, at age 19, define what "it" was.

In retrospect, it was maturity, self-assurance and the ability to put others at ease (more often, the patients comforted me as my hands trembled trying to find their pulse--one of which they assured me they did in fact have).

Though it may have seemed a lower-stakes path, I'd have been just as disastrous behind the front desk of a doctor's office. A smile the customer can hear from the other end of the phone? Only if it was from my temporomandibular joint popping after holding a prolonged scowl. Ask a mom with a screaming, sick kid for a copay? I'd have gone on break the instant I saw the diaper bag coming.

But if I had sought this kind of job, most anyone who checked out my resume, grades and extracurriculars would've been duped into hiring me. In an interview, they would've perceived me as smart, polite and reliable (not totally off base), but very possibly missed the insecurity, the unripened "it."

Successful medical practice employees, "absolutely need to have the right attitude," says Mike Fleischman, FAAHC, vice president and principal with Gates, Moore & Company in Atlanta, who I was chatting with for the upcoming special report I told you about. Staff need to be able to "sell to the patient," he says, not just the practice's services, but its philosophy and rules. A great front desk receptionist, for instance, can hold fast to the need to collect copays upfront--and help even the most insidious checkbook forgetters appreciate why.

With the unemployment rate being what it is, you can afford to be choosy when it comes to bringing on employees who have the precise it factor that your practice needs. Look beyond the glowing references, the interview smile. Don't hire a me. But if you do--or already have--don't panic. Instead, commit to helping your lackluster employee develop into a star. Be thorough in your training, find good mentors and help your hire see him- or herself excelling in the role you envision. - Deb