Ownership Cycle In The Service Profession

CHAPTER FIVE, Part c: The Ownership Cycle – the Service Profession and Doctors

The Service Profession involves Communication and sharing some form of expertise with customers. Helpline officers, those who man frontline desks and information counters and eateries, and most personal care or healthcare professionals fall into this category.

Successful Service Professionals Take Ownership of both Communication and the Expertise in their field. Conversely, the least successful ones refuse ownership of both. The surly waiter, the doctor who is always late, the hotline staff who does not know who to call for areas outside their field – these fall into the No-Ownership group.

Doctors are a unique category because of the power they wield. Health is

They Listen Carefully. They Own the reality that the patient is investing time and money and energy to see them. They accept the patient has the final choice and will strive to empower the patient to make that Best Choice. They use their expert knowledge to foresee what the patient may face after the consultation, explaining the possible warning signs and expected progress after the patient leaves the consultation room.

In such an interaction, the Patient must also take Ownership. Specifically, the Patient owns the Reality that they are not experts in the field they are seeing the doctor for. The patient also has knowledge about their own fears and concerns and should Own the reality that doctors cannot read their minds.

Patients do badly when they Refuse Ownership of the above. They then:

• argue with the doctor that the patient’s opinion and diagnosis must be right, and the patient knows better (the doctor wonders why the patient came to see them, if this is indeed

This includes honesty about their limitations. In this day and age of rapidly advancing medical science, doctors cannot know everything – this is Reality. They may also be totally unfamiliar with complementary medicine or other questions based on health that their patients may have based off the Internet. Rather than pretend to know the answer, doctors should say, “I do not know.” If the doctor’s patient is Realistic, they will accept this answer and respect the doctor for his or her honesty.

Doctors and Medical Science

The rapid advancement of medical science also means a doctor who truly Owns their Expertise must always be reading, learning, and thinking. When doctors own the limits of their expertise and a patient’s problem falls outside their competence, they refer the patient on to someone else more suited to solve the problem. They have no objection to patients who want a Second Opinion – they recognise they do not Own the patients’ final choice, they are not Omniscient, and their ego is not the most important thing here (the patient’s health is).

In contrast, No-Ownership doctors are afraid to show their lack of expertise and may refuse to refer patients beyond their competence, on to more competent