Eyeworld

EW MEETING REPORTER 166 March 2015 is what our primary mission is—to deliver a great patient experience." The goal of a practice should be to make sure that when patients leave the office, they have nothing but positive things to say about their experience, Mr. Maller said, especially considering that patients now have a huge ability to influence others online. "If you want to deliver a great patient experience, it begins and ends with your employees and the degree to which your employees are 'engaged,'" he said. Creating an environment where employees are engaged not only pro- vides a better patient experience but also has a direct financial effect on a practice, Dr. Maller said. In addition to reducing staff turnover, employee engagement enhances productivity and efficiency—engaged employees are 2–3 times as productive as those who are not, he said. Fostering employee engagement boils down to leadership, Mr. Maller said. Administrators must make employee engagement a strategic imperative within the practice while embracing their roles as leaders. "The best of the best performing practices have as their secret sauce good physician leadership and good administrative leadership, he said." Administrators can also build a successful practice by using their mistakes as an opportunity to learn, said Dianna E. Graves, clinical ser- vices manager at St. Paul Eye Clinic, Woodbury, Minn., in "A Success at Failure: How to Survive the Day, but Plan for the Future." Humans spend so much time trying to avoid failure that when it happens, they often miss the lessons they could learn from it, Ms. Graves said. Instead of working to prevent failure, she said, ophthalmic admin- istrators can use it—and even the potential for it—as a step to success. The first thing to do is to antic- ipate failure as a potential outcome, Ms. Graves said. When planning a project, anticipate potential prob- lems that might occur and try to figure out ahead of time how to han- dle them if they do occur, she said. Create a plan to deal with potential setbacks, delays, or resistance, but be free and willing to improvise along the way. "In order to survive, you need to be able to adapt on the run and make decisions concisely, rapidly, and assuredly," Ms. Graves said. "Make swift, educated decisions on the facts you have at hand and the outcome you wish to have." Simply avoiding failure leads to a fear of it, Ms. Graves said, which can negatively affect an entire prac- tice. "If you're always afraid of fail- ing, you're an ineffective manager." Rather than fearing failure, embrace it as an opportunity to improve, learn, and adapt. Editors' note: Mr. Maller has financial interests with Allergan. Ms. Graves has no related financial interests. Addressing corneal issues in cataract surgery Saturday's opening physicians' session featured cornea specialists discussing how to manage common and complex corneal problems in cataract patients. Session moderator Reporting from ASCRS•ASOA SideXSide 2015, Aventura, Fla., February 12–15 View videos from Friday at SideXSide 2015: EWrePlay.org Steve Charles, MD, Memphis, discusses cataract patients with unrecognized maculopathies, a circumstance that can lead to unexpectedly poor visual outcomes. View videos from Friday at SideXSide 2015: EWrePlay.org Richard Lewis, MD, Sacramento, Calif., emphasizes the importance of maximizing visual outcomes in patients with glaucoma. Toric IOLs are important in maximizing contrast sensitivity and visual function in these patients.

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