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EDITOR'S PAGE
Dan O'Connor
Dealing With Disruptive Physicians
You might want to kill them, but you can heal them with tough love.
ove the sinner, hate the sin. They say that's how you tame a disruptive doctor, but have you ever tried sending love in the presence of an evil thrower of tantrums and scalpels?
It ain't easy, but that's what Kent E. Neff, MD, FAPA, a psychiatrist
from Portland, Ore., who specializes in rehabilitating disruptive docs,
says you must learn to do if you want to curb bad behavior.
Managing your troubled surgeons with an iron hand inside a velvet
glove means "treating people with respect, but then getting really
tough about their behavior," says Dr. Neff, widely regarded as the
nation's foremost expert on troubled physicians. "Be hard on the
behavior, but soft on the person."
A "good-doctor, bad-behavior" mindset is the key to exorcising your
ORs of rude and crude physician behavior, says Dr. Neff, who last
month led "The Disruptive Physician Workshop" at OR Excellence,
Outpatient Surgery Magazine's annual conference. Surgical facility
leaders dealing with difficult docs attended Dr. Neff's intensive, interactive, 2-day, 8-hour workshop. Some of what they learned:
• Disruptive behavior is a chronic condition that endangers your
staff and your patients. At its core, it is an OR safety issue. "It is
impossible to have a truly safe unit when disruptive, disrespectful
behavior is present," says Dr. Neff, who once had a nurse confess to
him that she knew the surgeon had cut an artery, but she was too
afraid to tell him.
• Use the term "unacceptable" to address specific, observed behavior. If, for example, a surgeon yelled at a tech and called her "stupid,"
note the time and date of the behavior and address it with the doctor
in non-judgmental terms. Nurse managers must lower their tolerance
for harsh behavior and feel empowered to tell surgeons that their
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2013
