Physician engagement is a key step in driving meaningful quality initiatives. Many hospital executives struggle with how to engage physicians—and keep them engaged. The guiding principles include giving physicians a meaningful voice in the quality improvement process, building trust through transparency and driving toward aligned goals. But if you want to keep physicians (and others) interested over the long term, it’s also important to build fun into meeting agendas. Based on my personal experience as a physician leader, and what I learned from my colleagues at a recent dinner discussion on how hospitals can better leverage their clinical assets, here are five tried-and-true ideas worth repeating:
1. Switch up the atmosphere. Periodically change the meeting setting. I have seen lively conversations ensue in a relaxed environment with easy chairs and no tables, for example, with an appointed scribe to capture the output. Creating an environment that is conducive to open dialogue can make for a more intriguing and rewarding experience for all involved.
2. Get creative with food. LifePoint Health CMO Rusty Holman, M.D., took one team on a walking Italian food tour of Boston that was a huge hit with physicians and their spouses, and plans to skip the catering at the next meeting and instead order in hot chicken (a Nashville specialty). Physicians’ time is limited and highly valued (by them), so going the extra mile by providing memorable food will show them you value their time as well. Food can also be a good conversation starter, effectively breaking physicians out of their meeting “shell.”
3. Make it feel social. Along with making the atmosphere relaxed and comfortable, efforts to get a group functioning more like a team can be quite impactful. You might ask attendees to share any type of personal photo so they get to know a little bit about one another. For one such icebreaker, a physician snapped a photo of a commissioned abstract painting depicting the personalities of his family members. The group loved getting to know each other on such a personal level.
4. Take an outing. A group of HealthTrust Physician Advisors recently went on a tour of a tissue bank to see how the orthopedic implants they use every day are made. Getting to experience the process first-hand gave all of us a new perspective on the product category, including different ways tissue might get collected and processed.
5. Karaoke with a twist. One physician leader discussed challenging his docs to a karaoke contest. The physicians had to come prepared with a number related to their specialty. The technique may be more popular with docs in cardiology (think “Heartbreaker” and “Piece of My Heart”) and orthopedics (e.g., “Bad to the Bone” and “I’m Hip”) than those in neurology (they may resort to “The Cranial Nerves Song” from their med school days), and is probably ill-advised for urology department meetings.
One potentially big reason for sagging physician attendance at meetings is that they’re more informational than engaging, in addition to taking time away from doctors’ clinical practice and life outside the hospital. Keep the meetings open and focused on topics that lead to action, but don’t be afraid to work in some fun and inject some humor. You might just find physicians start looking forward to them.
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