Marie Devery, Chrissie Dodds, Kathie Sale, Sylvia Hewison and Justin Robinson

This year’s RANZCO Practice Managers’ conference got off to a roaring start with the keynote speaker address by Tracey Spicer, Australian journalist and news presenter. These days, Tracey is best known for her ‘femoir’, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, and being an advocate for change with the #MeToo movement. Her sharing of personal struggles, calling out workplace harassment and ways to change workplace culture, including the need for robust bystander training, struck a chord with many. This, followed by the ‘speed dating’ interactive session, ensured there was plenty of discussion and networking during the morning break.

David Wenban from the Australian Health Industry Group presented, in his usual engaging style, on HR, legal issues, and how managers will need to evolve to meet the needs of the workforce of the future. Key messages were to often “do something earlier” and that while technology can create more efficiencies, practices will continue to need people with good customer service skills, so spend more time on hiring people as, “You cannot buy attitude and personality!”

Day two kicked off with an informative presentation by Marion McKay on Managing our time; our stressors and our leadership – gaining a balance. Marion shared tips on ways to deal with people experiencing problems by using Stephen Covey’s circle of concern of influence tool, taken from his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which distinguishes between proactive people and reactive people. Proactive people “focus on what they can do and can influence”, whereas reactive people “focus their energy on things beyond their control.” Marion said, “People don’t communicate well enough. As managers we should be asking the team, ‘what are the ways we can invest more in you?’”

Other topics covered during the conference included KPIs and benchmarking, business planning, risk evolution in practice and mastering customer experience. Donna Glenn presented the findings from the Employment Benchmarking Survey of Delegate data. Unfortunately, out of the 152 Practice Manager delegates present (the largest attendance at RANZCO PM conferences to date), Donna had only had 10 respondents. While the data was useful, a larger return would have meant more meaningful data could have been derived from the results. New Zealanders gave feedback that not all practices could access the requested data, that some data related to Medicare codes and that future surveys should be made more New Zealand-friendly.

The overriding theme of the conference was leadership and the challenges we face, with a focus on risk and compliance issues. These included work health & safety and managing difficult conversations. Katherine Wagner’s presentation on day three on Effective Communication contained valuable tools on how to put ‘action’ into our listening by adopting a listening mindset, showing attentiveness, using open questions, paraphrasing and reflecting. There were some good take home tips on understanding that challenging conversations are inevitable and necessary, ways of managing our emotions when dealing with difficult situations, being compassionate but “hard on the problem”, reflecting, celebrating when we get it right, and the importance of self-care.

Day three saw us mark Australian Remembrance Day with a one-minute silence at 11.00am. This was also an opportunity to reflect on those people who were affected by the fires raging in New South Wales and Queensland. The sight of the massive smoke cloud drifting over Sydney in late afternoon was a very sobering sight.

We were treated on the final day to presentations from Colleen Sullivan, Australian Association of Practice Managers who spoke on the Lifecycle of a practice manager and Karen Phillips, author and innovation facilitator, who closed out the conference with a lively and interactive presentation on Building a Bigger Brighter Future for your Practice. Colleen was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal Award, for “contributions to the College, Ophthalmology or community exhibit an exceptional devotion of time, effort, and action setting them apart from other contributors.” Karen burst onto the stage in bright yellow and black, not dissimilar to an energetic beautiful buzzy bee, and wowed the audience with her energy and enthusiasm. She reminded us that “practice managers are the morale managers of the practice”. I’m sure that I was not the only one present who wanted to bottle her effervescence to take home!

This conference was full of valuable reminders that the practice manager’s role is a complex and challenging one that can, at times, seem daunting and lonely. But when you get the staff and management mix right, this is a role with great rewards. It is here that this practice manager would like to end with a ‘shout out’ to all the talented practice managers out there. As one speaker noted, the next time someone says to you, “I don’t know how you do what you do”, take the compliment and own it! A big thank you to the organising committee for delivering such an informative and engaging conference.

Sylvia Hewison is practice manager at The Terrace Eye Centre in Wellington and coordinates quarterly education sessions for the Wellington Ophthalmology Special Interest Group.