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Employer booking back-to-back session
I have been employed at the same holistic health / acupuncture clinic setting since I made a career change to massage therapy four years ago. Overall, it's a pretty great place to work. Pay is about $10 higher per hour than anywhere else I've found in the area, the therapists and practitioners are highly skilled, and as employees, we're generally treated quite well.
However, in about the last two years, management has gotten the idea that receptionists should book the therapists back-to-back with no break between sessions when there is no other way to fit in an extra appointment. (Normally, we have 15 minutes between clients built into the schedule). This happened to me again yesterday. I was working on my last client of the day and within 20 minutes of the session's end someone slid a note under my door that I would have another client immediately following in one of the upstairs / overflow rooms (you have to go outside and upstairs to another part of the building).
There were a few problems with this: 1) I have a toddler who I pick up from preschool a couple of hours after my shift. This appointment would bleed into the time after my shift ended, cutting into the time I budget for my commute, grocery shopping, etc. IMO, you don't schedule outside of someone's shift without asking them, first. 2) I had no chance to see if the upstairs room was set up correctly for my extra session (table height, heat on in the room, etc., etc.). 3) No time to pull and look at the client's chart before the last session.
I find it really unreasonable to schedule back-to-back sessions, as do my fellow employees. As everyone here knows, it's physically impossible to have no transition time between clients, even if another room is set up and waiting for you. You need to wait for your original client to exit the room and see how they are feeling, give them water, etc. to close out the session professionally. Also, it's setting unreasonable expectations in terms of start time with the second client: If your first client ends at 3:30 and the second client is told their session will begin at 3:30, that's simply not going to happen. I had a client get really angry once because I didn't start right on time when I was booked back-to-back.
When I have raised my dislike for being scheduled back-to-back with our office manager before, her response was, "Well, it doesn't happen all the time", as if I was being unreasonable. I'm a Type A person, and this type of scheduling really stresses me out. I feel like that stress definitely carries over to my clients on days this is the case.
What do you all think? How can we, as staff, address this with our employers effectively? Is this something other therapists reading this post encounter frequently?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kyle R.Taylor on
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Hi. Kyle here and I have been in the same experience and have addressed the situation from the stand point that 1. For clients it is in the best interest that a refreshed therapist non rushed and on time will only afford rebooking of appointments. 2 a refreshed therapist is more likly not to become injured and burned out. I remind the front desk that over booking appointment time actually creates an assemble line service and may not be in what the business or wellness mission that is being offered.
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Permalink Reply by Kirstie on
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Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, Kyle. I'm a newb to posting here, so I really appreciate it.
I agree with you 100% about the value of a "refreshed" therapist. When I'm feeling stressed and rushed, or irritated with the situation at hand, I know I'm not at my best. And yes! It does create a bit of an "assembly line" feel. "Welcome to massage palace. Please drive through."
I wonder whether it's ultimately more effective to speak to the desk staff (we don't have a super high desk turnover rate, but there is some) or to the management. On one hand, the desk staff are usually the ones booking appointments, although one of the co-owners, who is also the office manager, sometimes books appointments. However, I'm not sure they would really feel "empowered" to flout what the owners have asked them to do in regards to fitting as many appointments into the schedule as possible.
Either way you are correct: It's not in the best interest of the business nor is it in line with their wellness mission...
Kyle R.Taylor said:Hi. Kyle here and I have been in the same experience and have addressed the situation from the stand point that 1. For clients it is in the best interest that a refreshed therapist non rushed and on time will only afford rebooking of appointments. 2 a refreshed therapist is more likly not to become injured and burned out. I remind the front desk that over booking appointment time actually creates an assemble line service and may not be in what the business or wellness mission that is being offered.
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Pueppi, thanks so much for all the time you put into thinking about this issue, and for your responses.
We very rarely have staff meetings at work (our last one was August 2014), but we have quite a large staff. Ideally, I think it would be great to address this issue as therapists bringing it up to management during a staff meeting. While our office is run professionally, things are fairly low key and informal in terms of the co-owners being available to us most of the time for us to have discussions with when issues do arise. I think that individually, therapists / practitioners have many discussions with the co-owners about issues. However, I don't think we tend to communicate collectively with them about larger issues. I'd be willing to bet most, if not all, of the practitioners at my work place feel similarly about the back-to-back appointments.
In regards to your point about creating a training / reference manual for desk staff, that would be fantastic. I don't think we have something like this in place, currently. Our desk staff are extremely busy and are responsible for everything from answering the phone and scheduling appointments to laundry to changing over acupuncture rooms, etc. One person (the office manager) is currently responsible for training new desk staff, and I know she had to squeeze this in between all of her other daily work when we hire new staff. It's easy to overlook stuff and near impossible, I imagine, for new desk staff to remember everything without a resource to which they can refer.
It's just helpful to hear that my feelings about this back-to-back scheduling issue are not invalid, and that I'm not being unreasonable. Thanks!
Pueppi Texas said:I got to thinking while I was in session just now... you may also want to discuss how this makes you feel in terms of being able to keep your position as a therapist in the office.
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Great! Thanks, Pueppi. :)
Pueppi Texas said:Maybe some of these threads from another forum I belong to, will help you with wording for time between clients and breaks... if you decide to create a training/reference manual.
I'll see if I can locate any old threads on this forum as well, but I am new here and haven't had much success in becoming as good of a search-queen as at MP.com as I am at BWOL. :)
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