Tales from the Trenches: Patient Complaint

We share a real-world story about a patient’s serious allegation against an employee and what it takes to respond with care, speed, and sound judgment. We break down how we build trust, gather facts, and make decisions that protect patients, staff, and the clinic’s reputation. 
• A high-stakes allegation coming in unexpectedly 
• Why leaders need a trusted HR partner on call 
• Asking for details when the topic feels uncomfortable 
• Creating trust fast to prevent missing key facts 
• Collecting evidence such as video, photos, and texts 
• Making a decisive call using the big-picture test 
• Protecting clinic culture while reducing HR risk 
If you would like an HR assessment or ongoing HR support, please reach out to me at seasoned-advice.com. 
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. 
I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for Eye Care leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned-advice.com. 

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This episode is brought to you by Seasoned Advice HR, where I help eye care clinics to hire, retain, and manage better — helping you get Better Results Through People. Learn more at seasoned-advice.com. 

Contact me directly at mike@seasoned-advice.com 

Get my free HR and leadership downloads here: https://www.seasoned-advice.com/signup-for-free-downloads

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Greetings and welcome to iCare Leadership Live. This is the podcast for iCare leaders who want to level up their leadership, create better cultures, and improve the financial results of their clinics. Now, let's join the show.

A Patient Makes A Serious Allegation

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Greetings everybody. This is Mike with iCare Leadership Live, and this is another edition of Tales from the Trenches, where I tell stories from the world of HR and ophthalmology, or just from HR, maybe not necessarily ophthalmology, all cases, but uh where you can learn about how we handled something. Maybe we handled it well, maybe we didn't handle it well, but we can always learn. And that's what Tales from the Trenches is all about. Today I wanted to talk about a little scenario that involved a patient. Uh, a patient that came in to our clinic and that made a very serious allegation. And this situation is was similar to many cases that I've handled, where a person made an allegation, a serious allegation, and how you move forward is really important. And I'm gonna try to be kind of vague and nonspecific just to protect the protect the innocent here. But we had a patient reach out, and the patient made an allegation about an employee and claimed that the employee had done something highly inappropriate. And this was really concerning. This phone call came in, and actually a physician took the call and transferred the patient over to me because the physician just wasn't wasn't in a position to be able to respond properly, and because it was a very unusual allegation. And so, you know, my first learning, I think, from this experience is you never know. You never know when something is gonna come up that you're not prepared for. An allegation, a claim, a difficult situation. And so having someone that you can pick up the phone and call or text and say, hey, I need some help on this, is really important. And you don't really have time necessarily to triage and look in the phone book and figure out, you know, who am I going to involve with this? It's ideal to have a relationship with someone that you can trust. And so that was the first thing. If you're

Have A Trusted Advisor Ready

SPEAKER_00 2:51

a business owner out there, you want to have someone that you can trust in those situations. Next thing that we had to do is we had to find out really details about what transpired between the patient and the employee. And you've got to be really comfortable talking about uncomfortable things sometimes. And this was no exception. And I've dealt with so many situations in my career where there was an allegation made, and the allegation was just really difficult to talk about, and made people feel uncomfortable, made me uncomfortable, and made the person sharing the information uncomfortable. This show is sponsored by Seasoned Advice HR Services, where I help eye care businesses to make more money and save more money by hiring better, retaining better, and reducing your HR risk. If you would like an HR assessment or ongoing HR support, please reach out to me at seasoned-advice.com.

Creating Trust For Hard Details

SPEAKER_00 3:58

And so my second lesson or takeaway is, you know, when there are serious concerns on the table, you have to have a high degree of empathy, you have to have a high degree of trust, you have to create trust in a very short amount of time sometimes, or ideally, you have to have created a lot of trust through relationships with employees, time. And if they don't trust you, they're not going to, they're going to withhold details. And so create trust that you're going to take their concern seriously and that you are going to take action and you are going to help alleviate the concern. Because they've reached out to you because they have a concern. Maybe they've been losing sleep over something. Maybe they are worried that this is going to continue. Maybe they're worried they're going to be retaliated against. You've got to alleviate their concerns that those things are going to come to reality. And so you have to have an immense skill to create trust. You've got to know where to dig into details. You know,

Gathering Facts And Physical Evidence

SPEAKER_00 5:15

thinking about this situation, it was really important to get facts and get evidence. And that involves talking to the people involved, having difficult conversations. That involves getting physical evidence if you can. I've had situations where there was video, where there were photos, there were text messages, there were sometimes recordings. And in this situation, some of that data was present, and that was instrumental. And so knowing where to get data and what data to get and not being afraid to ask for it is vital.

Deciding With The Big Picture

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And then, you know, the last thing I'll say about these situations is you know, being able to act decisively can be harder than you think because sometimes the way forward is ambiguous. And in this situation, it wasn't necessarily ambiguous, but sometimes it is, and you have to make a difficult decision. And there are different ways of thinking about this decision, but ultimately I would recommend that you look at the big picture. What is the big picture? If we decide to do A, how does that look? How does it feel? What is the narrative that's that people tell themselves about that? If we decide to do decision B, what about that? What is how does that look? What is the 30,000-foot view of that? How would that read on the cover of a newspaper? If it was a year later and we were getting sued over this, would we feel comfortable that we did B? Maybe B, we weren't 100% certain, but we did it and we feel you know more safe in that situation. You've got to look at that. You've got to look at well, how would I feel in a year? How would I feel in a week? How would I feel 10 years from now? And usually when you look at it that way, and when you look at it from a high level, it becomes pretty clear the right thing. You never know, you never know exactly what happened. You'll always have some doubt about the facts of a situation. But you will usually be pretty clear on how you want your clinic to be seen and how you want your employees to feel. And so those are important questions. So you so if you get too absorbed in details, there's a time for details and facts, and then there's a time to step back and look at the big gestalt, the big picture of what does your clinic stand for? What do you stand for? What do you want your employees and patients to feel when they come to work, when they talk about working for your clinic? And so be able to step back and think about that. So, anyway, this has been another edition of Tales from the Trenches. I think, you know, these examples are really helpful because they help to kind of illustrate, you know, ways of looking at your clinic and protecting it from HR risk, protecting your staff from concerns. And I hope that you know these little stories, even though I can't really share details, are useful to help you realize that difficult things come up, difficult choices come up, and it's helpful to have a partner to help you navigate through

Protecting Culture And Reducing HR Risk

SPEAKER_00 8:52

those. If you're looking for a partner on issues related to HR or hiring or HR risk or protecting yourself, I would love to chat with you about it. But for now, this has been Mike with iCare Leadership Live, and I look forward to chatting with you again on the podcast. Well,

Subscribe And Stay Connected

SPEAKER_00 9:15

that brings this episode of iCare Leadership Live to a conclusion. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. I promise to bring you more guests and content to help make you a better iCare clinical leader. I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for iCare leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned advice.com. Now go out there and lead with confidence.