Deborah Bell speaks to Niki Boersma about how to run short morning huddles that improve practice management…
A morning huddle or team meeting can bring many benefits to efficiently managing a practice. But time can often be a barrier as most practices are already busy and many can feel that it would simply cut into the working day too much.
However, at The Smile Rooms in Malton, they have found a way of holding huddles that take just five minutes but still make a positive impact. I spoke to practice manager Niki Boersma to find out more…
Deborah Bell (DB): Why did the practice introduce morning huddles?
Niki Boersma (NB): It is a very simple but effective way of improving communication across the whole team. It focuses everyone’s mind on the same thing and makes sure everyone has the same information at the start of the day.
We have a huddle sheet and a list of the day’s appointments and we go through anything particularly of note, i.e. if we have someone who needs to be seen in the ground-floor surgery, we can plan that patient’s journey appropriately and clinicians know where they need to be in the building at what time.
We’ll also go through any positives from the previous day, or anything that might have gone wrong, and our business targets.
DB: It sounds very thorough, how do you run the huddle?
NB: It takes us around five minutes. It can take time to find the right format that works for you in order for it to be effective but not too time-consuming. In the beginning it was taking us 15 minutes until everyone got used to the procedure.
We have an agenda which often has the same things on it – such as practical tasks which just serve as a reminder, e.g. defib checking, making sure the fire door is open – and then we simply write on any extras.
Our receptionist sets the agenda, but we take it in turns among the team to lead the discussion so that it is a shared responsibility that everyone is invested in. Anything that needs more attention is brought up at our longer team meetings.
DB: What are the main ways your practice has benefitted from the huddles?
NB: The key thing has just been great communication across the whole team. We have also instigated lots of positive changes that have come just from people gathering together, talking and sparking off ideas.
Without something like this in the morning, it’s possible for members of the team to just go straight into surgery without other people even knowing they have arrived. This can be quite isolating for them, and can have a knock-on effect for managing the practice as you don’t necessarily know who’s in the building or who might be running late, etc.
DB: What advice do you have for a practice that wants to set up a morning huddle?
NB: Keep it short, punchy and relevant to everybody in your practice. If something only relates to one or two team members, it would be more effective to speak to them separately, otherwise you risk the rest of the team disengaging from the whole process.
Some agenda items don’t need to be detailed; they can literally just be a couple of words to remind the team of an action that needs taking. For example, someone was forgetting to check the fridge temperature so we just added ‘fridge temperature’ to the agenda and that was all it took to resolve that issue.
You do need to invest some time into the huddles when you introduce them. However, in the long run you become more efficient at doing them and they actually save a lot more time due to better communication.
DB: Thanks for the tips Niki, sounds like morning huddles are really working well for you!
About Niki
Niki Boersma has been the practice manager at The Smile Rooms since 2015 and has worked within dentistry for the past 30 years.
