“No gum-snapping.”

That’s what one practice’s office policy manual now includes, after one compulsive offender irked her workmates once too often.

At another practice, a family physician and his assigned nurse tattled continuously on each other to the practice manager “mom” — for eight years.

Still elsewhere, two job-sharing administrative employees waged a silent but vicious “the stapler goes here” war, with victory — and the stapler — flip-flopping accordingly, depending on who was working that day.

Believe it or not, these are true-life scenarios. Most every medical practice experiences similar interpersonal issues, ranging from needling annoyances — “I can’t work with someone who giggles/sniffs/belches/clacks her dentures all the time” — to down ’n dirty fisticuffs in the hallway to wallet-emptying lawsuit embroilment.

Do skirmishes such as these amuse us when retold at the water cooler? Oh, yes. But if such issues are ignored or handled improperly, the results can be serious: For one, staff morale can plummet, stunting work output and allowing a negative atmosphere to infect the office. This can be expensive. According to a recent Gallup poll, negativity in the workplace costs the U.S. economy nearly $300 billion a year in lost productivity.

Patient care and patient satisfaction may plummet, too. The negativity caused by an office staff locked in chronic conflict will trickle down to your client base, and ultimately redirect many dollars from unhappy patients who ask to have their records transferred to a kinder, gentler practice.

Not so amusing.

Certainly, you want a friendly, flexible atmosphere where employees feel free to express themselves, but where they also honor the practice’s policies and culture. How can you build — and lead — a cohesive, communicative medical team so that everyone will work as needed yet still enjoy coming to work everyday?

Play nice with others

Think about it: You’ve got a small space with a lot of people trying to work together at often stressful jobs. Interpersonal problems are a “when,” not an “if,” which makes it all the more important for everyone to re-read the peer etiquette sections of Emily Post, Miss Manners, Dr. Phil, or any other guru of good behavior. One common breach of decorum?
The cancer of unified teams: Blamecasting, especially across departments.

Shepherd Eye Center’s practice administrator Christina Kennelley agrees wholeheartedly: “One of the biggest problems in departments is not appreciating or understanding what another [department] does — ‘It’s their fault, their job, they’re not doing it right.’” To minimize this bond-breaking behavior, Kennelley says they cross-train their employees, leading to a much deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of all jobs.

There’s nothing like blame to gum up the administrative works. It’s embarrassing to be blamed for something, and how tempting it is to try and pass it along like playing hot potato at a birthday party. This, of course, hurts both productivity and staff relations. The antidote? Incorporating a mindset of personal accountability, says Kennelley.

Kennelley speaks from personal experience. Shepherd Eye Center, with offices in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., recently experienced a period of staff discord after the practice grew rapidly. “People were feeling less cohesive,” she says. But instead of just gathering the staff together and lecturing them on the evils of tattling, gossiping, and passing on blame, she sought the advice of a consultant, who suggested a book by organizational consultant John Miller, titled “QBQ! The Question Behind the Question.”

“I made it required reading for the entire staff; it’s a really fast read,” she says. “Then we had a big staff meeting about it, and I had someone come talk about it who’d read the book too.”