Unified Practice

If you’re like me, you probably have an extensive hat collection.

“Hats?” I hear you say.

Well, I’m not talking about baseball caps, trilbys, berets, or Indiana Jones fedoras. I’m being a little metaphorical here. I mean all the hats you have to wear as a professional acupuncturist. I’m talking about your practitioner hat, your team leader hat, your educator hat, your marketing hat, and probably a few others. In the course of any working day it might seem like you’re forever swapping between those hats — and sometimes trying to wear them all simultaneously.

Not easy!

(And that’s not to mention all the other personal hats you have to wear outside your working hours — your family member hat, your friend hat, your dedicated gym-goer hat, your responsible-member-of-the-community hat, and so on.)

In fact, your schedule might seem like one crowded hat stand.

For independent practitioners running their own clinics, it’s not enough to have just the education, skills, and experience to be a great acupuncturist. The profession demands you stay on top of many other tasks. You have to be a caregiver and a businessperson. A social media strategist and a stock-taker. Treating patients, maintaining electronic health records, balancing the books, and all the other responsibilities that go into successful acupuncture practice management can often seem like too many functions for one person.

So how do you do it?

Some professionals seem to have the gift of compartmentalizing, of quickly swapping hats as the situation demands. One minute they’re clearing out their inbox with aplomb, the next they’re soothing a patient’s anxieties about a first treatment. One minute they’re recapitalizing to expand their clinic’s premises, the next they’re discussing the newest techniques of treatment with colleagues.

But not everybody can pull such an immediate switch-a-roo.

That’s why a professionally organized schedule is essential if you want to successfully take care of the varied tasks of a professional acupuncturist’s day. By utilizing acupuncture practice management software with an efficient integrated scheduling feature, you will be able to stay on top of a rigorous and diverse schedule.

The best TCM software syncs easily with iCal or Google Calendar. It solves a lot of the headaches of trying to keep a clear picture in your head of your availability for patients. Contemporary integrated acupuncture software allows patients to take control of booking their own appointments, while supporting practitioners who treat in multiple rooms or locations. Once it is up and running, you’ll be able to enjoy the freedom of a well-organized daily routine.

Maybe we’re a little biased but you should definitely check out scheduling with Unified Practice. Highly customizable online scheduling, complete with automated notifications and reminders, means your schedule can more or less run itself: reducing no-shows and streamlining your clinic. Also, you’ll never lose sight of your agenda with our scheduling applications for your phone and personal calendar sync.

It might mean you’ll have the time to go hatless and simply be yourself.

Guest blog post by Matt Leask.