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The Power of Peer-to-Peer Learning

By Amir Khoshnevis, OD

Many of us attend optometric events like conferences and continuing education seminars, but sometimes the best education can be gained from our peers. Peer learning is a way for an OD to tap the experience of sometimes more seasoned practitioners while offering the more experienced doctors a fresh perspective. Or it can be a way to simply learn different ways of performing the same management task from other ODs with a similar level of experience.

It has been said that you have truly mastered a subject when you are able to effectively explain it to another. For that reason, sharing expertise with a colleague offers the doctor sharing a chance to reinforce already-mastered skills or concepts. The doctor learning the new concept or way of doing business, meanwhile, gains a perspective that has been battle-tested, so to speak. They are shown how what they learned in the classroom, and may have only limited experience with in the exam room, plays out over the long-term, day-to-day in a busy optometric practice.

But peer-to-peer learning doesn’t always have to be organized along seasoned and less-seasoned lines. Often, peers with roughly the same level of experience have differing perspectives on everything from the clinical to managing inventory in the optical dispensary and how to market the practice. Sharing your management style with another doctor gives you additional best practices to try, helping to ensure you don’t overlook profitable new opportunities.

Here are my top 10 tips for effective peer-to-peer learning groups:

Peer-to-peer learning is based on trust. You must open up and agree to share the good and bad. Start with six- to-12 doctors (similar mode of practice recommended but with a mix of gender and age).

Learning works both ways. If you want a problem of yours solved, solve another doctor’s first.

Prepare a practice pearl to share prior to arriving. Never wing it!

Be open to constructive criticism (QTIP–Quit Taking It Personally–applies)

Come prepared (assignments, readings and reports on previous action items completed)

Find a doctor who is willing to serve as a moderator. This person should function as a facilitator rather than as a teacher.

Respect the time, budget and topic area decided on. Stay on the prepared and agreed upon topic unless everyone wishes to change the topic.

Set expectations, goals and action items. Do this as a group before the start of the first session and ask the facilitator to help the group stick to these plans.

Assign a note-taker and distribute clear and concise notes as soon as possible following each session.

Meet in a neutral, quiet place with conversationally friendly seating (round, square or U-shaped seating arrangements)

Amir Khoshnevis, OD, founded Carolina Family Eye Care in 2003. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry and is a Vision Source Administrator. Dr. Khoshnevis serves as a Professional Development Consultant for Alcon and lectures nationally on practice management topics. He also serves as a national committee member for Optometry Giving Sight. To contact him: drk@carolinafamilyeyecare.com.

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