To paraphrase the ad slogan from a number of years ago, an educated staff is probably your best asset. The more they know, the more that they can help you and alert you when working with your patients.

At least monthly, I'm a big proponent of having a training session for all of your staff. This could be over a lunch hour, which we would have to pay them for at that time, but it would be money well spent. So get your staff together and spend some time to help them to develop the skills they need in order to best help your patients and to help you.

Focus on the kinds of training they may never have gotten before. Diagnosis, the treatment options that patients have such as prescription drugs, different kinds of therapy, tests. You might also take a look at business topics from time to time, customer service areas, phone protocols.

Look for open discussion of ideas. The folks who work day to day on the floor are sometimes your best sources of ideas and they see things which you very often won't. Because you can't be everywhere and you're not going to be everywhere.