Healthy meetings in the hospital

Just because you work in a hospital, doesn't mean you're surrounded by patients all day. Of course doctors, medical specialists and management assistants in this sector also have administrative tasks and obligations to confer, resulting in long working days. This often needs to be evening work, as daytimes are filled with patient consultations, tests and operations. Unfortunately, meetings have become increasingly complex in recent years; the extensive co-operations/partnerships within the healthcare system are leading to a lack of transparency in decision-making processes. Want to be fit at the end of a long working day? Take advantage of these 5 tips to give your meetings a health check.

Tip 1: Make an operations schedule for your meeting

Medical specialists are accustomed to working according to a structured (operations) schedule. Keeping to the structure of the meeting however, is often challenging. All too often, the agenda is disregarded and meetings regularly overrun. An agenda with precise timing per agenda point is the solution. If one participant watches the clock and the chairperson sticks to this, the meeting must adhere to the timing. Do you want to make meetings even more efficient? Specify the target per agenda item. Does a decision need to be made? brainstormed? or is it simply informative? Will you follow these starter tips? Your colleagues will be more focused and the meeting completed quicker.


Tip 2: Use tools

Hospitals increasingly share medical specialists or complete teams, requiring regular meetings. Want to save costly (travel) time? Why not use digital tools, such as online conferencing? It can be easily facilitated using Google Hangout, for example. Want to go one step further? Take a peek at hospitals which have special teleconferencing facilities.


Tip 3: Digital conferencing

The operating theater is full of state-of-the-art technology in order to help patients as effectively as possible, so why would you not help yourself by using the latest conferencing technology? Ever considered digital conferencing? It reduces the piles of paper to the thickness of an iPad. All meeting documents are in the cloud, available for viewing by anyone with authority to do so. Thanks to the shared information always being complete and correct, you create an open and transparent organization. Meetings become a much more orderly operation!


Tip 4: Spring into action!

After a long working day, do your colleagues tend to drift off during the meeting? Get up from your chair and deal with a couple of agenda points standing up. The dynamic approach will ensure you work through the agenda quicker. And as you know well, it's also healthier for you than continuously sitting down!


Tip 5: Meeting after-care

Your patients are not the only ones needing after-care, so too does your meeting! Most meetings spend too much time reflecting on the previous one, but this phenomenon can be avoided. Make sure there is a good 'to do' list and appoint someone whom participants can approach for follow-up questions and detailing of the action points. This keeps everyone connected after the meeting, action points are more successfully completed and time saved in the next meeting.
Would you like more tips on effective meetings?

Bonus tip: Try to keep it light, sometimes.

If you're talking about important things, like workplace safety, keep in mind that short attention spans can be countered with some humor. See how funny safety moments can be efficient.

iBabs Meeting Assessment
iBabs is a leader in paperless meetings and enables you to reduce these piles of documents to the thickness of your tablet. Thousands of organizations have been using this system for more than 15 years.

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