Tips for Working with Difficult Doctors
Proceed with Caution When Hiring Staff
Ideally, an institution won’t hire someone with intimidating and disruptive behavior in the first place. But this is always easier said than done.
In an effort to select and hire the best employees, it is important during the interview process to ask many questions about a candidate’s prior experiences and previous bosses as well as what the employee perceives to be good behavior and reasonable expectations.
“Listen for victim-like responses and criticisms of prior supervisors or employers,” says A. Kevin Troutman, Esq., a partner at Fisher Phillips in Houston and a former healthcare human resources executive. “Such responses are red flags that may help predict how the applicant will work out in your organization.”
Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq., president and CEO of ELI in Atlanta, says it’s best for the candidate to have interviews with multiple staff members in different ranks.
“Sometimes people will show a different side if he or she perceives someone as unimportant or someone that he or she could boss around,” he says. “The interview can be very telling if the applicant is a cultural fit or not.”
Carefully check a candidate’s previous training and employment records. It can be difficult, however, to decipher whether a potential employee will indeed be a good choice because prior employers almost uniformly refuse to provide more than someone’s position and dates of employment when references are checked, says Robert Fuller, Esq., an attorney with Nelson Hardiman, LLP, in Los Angeles.
Consequently, Fuller recommends that hospitals have very specific probation policies, allowing for termination for any reason within the first 90 days of employment and active supervision of new employees to ensure that no red flags are raised within that time frame.
If someone was fired from a previous job, use extra caution in making a hiring decision. Paskoff advises considering the facts: What was the person fired for? What do his or her records look like?
“Just because someone was fired, you shouldn’t dismiss him or her, but know what he or she was fired for and how well the firing was documented and investigated,” he says.
Fuller advises differently.
“If proper policies were followed and the employee failed to comport with improvement recommendations, he or she is not going to be any different the second time around,” he says.
Although the job interview process can be lengthy, “don’t take any shortcuts,” Paskoff says. You may end up costing an organization a lot more than time if you do.
—Karen Appold
