Doctor Patient Relations

Tell Patients Compelling Stories to Illustrate Your Recommendations

By Ally Stoeger, OD

It doesn’t matter how many innovative vision solutions you are able to provide for your patients if your patients don’t know you have them. If you wait until the end of your eye exam to give patient recommendations, it often comes out as a list of facts and features and results in boredom and information overload for your patient.

A much better way is to tell brief “stories” as you go through the exam. For example, if the patient mentions they have eye strain when they use the computer, instead of nodding and entering it in the patient chart tell the patient, “Our practice sees many patients with this type of problem. Just yesterday we had a patient tell us how successful they are with their new specially designed computer lenses.”

Or you may want to tell the avid baseball player in your exam chair how much stats improved for another player when you refit him with a more precise type of contact lens.

Keep the stories real, but make sure you respect patient confidentiality. It’s okay to use a bit of literary license and change some details so that you protect patient privacy. You can bring up success stories from yesterday, a month ago or a year ago. We all have these stories. Share them with your patients. Just don’t tell more than one or two stories, and keep them to less than one minute each.

Success Rule #1: Never bore your patients. They will remember your advice better if you tell a short, interesting success story here or there while examining them. Then tie those stories into your wrap up. The only thing worse than rattling off a bunch of recommendations at the end of the exam is not making any recommendations at all.

ROB Readers:

How do you help patients better understand your recommendations? What do you find most effective in getting patients to understand the usefulness of what you are telling them?

Ally Stoeger, OD, is founder of www.RealPracticeToday.com and president of Consulting With Vision LLC, an optometry practice consulting firm. She was a founding and managing partner of a multi-doctor practice in northern Virginia. Dr. Stoeger’s area of special interest is enhancing practice revenue and web/social media marketing. Contact: ally@realpracticetoday.com.

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