"I'm Not Tech Savvy!"

I’m not tech savvy.

This is a phrase I hear pretty much on a daily basis when I’m coaching Clinicians in Private Practice. It’s rare that someone says to me “tech comes easy to me”.

If everyone professes to be bad at tech, how come there are so many successful Clinicians out there? If you are alive today and practising medicine, or work in an allied healthcare profession, you will be using tech of some kind in your working life. At a very basic level, it’s likely to be email, and most people I’ve met have an Amazon account. Guess what? That’s tech, and you don’t need to be afraid of it.

If you want to have a happy and successful Private Practice, you can’t hide from tech.?

Refusing to engage with tech is the digital equivalent of declaring yourself content with being illiterate. I’m not going to blame or judge you for it, but I would like to show you that there can be another way.

And before you claim it’s an age thing, a 2017 study showed that Millennials (aka digital natives) are no better at tech than their parents. My peri-octogenarian mother has learned to master publishing software for her bloodhound club, and even has an email marketing list. Not bad for someone who originally trained in a career that involved putting her arm up cows’ bottoms.

Getting more practised and comfortable with tech is the number one activity that will help you to grow your Private Practice, and believe it or not, it can be really enjoyable. In fact, I’ve grown to absolutely love using tech in my own businesses, and I know you can too.

Why bother to become more “tech-savvy”, you may be thinking? Surely you could just let someone else take care of it? Whilst this is partially true, you’ll be missing out on some key benefits:

No longer having to fear the GDPR.

Many Clinicians feel overwhelmed by the process of becoming GDPR compliant, and so they never start. Because they believe they’re “not good at computers”, they remain shackled to a running a paper-heavy practice, devoid of automation, and a real risk of data loss. (Remember the GDPR is all about ensuring and demonstrating that you keep data safely; data loss in the form of a pile of notes left on a desk in a consultation room, is as bad as sending confidential information to the wrong person).

Many Clinicians still send snail mail in the post, but with a first-class stamp now costing 85p, isn’t it time to move over to a robust practice management software system, and encrypted email, that can send those clinic letters for free?

Think that postage doesn’t add up to much? If I sent three letters (e.g.to the patient, the physio and the GP) per patient consultation, I’d be spending over ￡500 per month on postage. That’s mad.

No longer feeling embarrassed about your “messy” digital file management.

Do you have all kinds files scattered around on your computer desktop, in the documents folder, on various USB sticks, and in cloud services such as DropBox or iCloud?

Maybe you’re not sure where you even have data, or perhaps you started off with good data management intentions, but now your filing system resembles the chaotic aftermath of a three-year-old’s birthday party? Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your files in a logical and organised system that made things easy to find, and was safely backed up?

No longer having to ask your web designer every time you need something adding to your website.

?You’ve written an awesome blog, and you have to wait for two weeks (and nag twice) before your web designer gets around to adding that content for you. Or maybe they did teach you when your site was built (four years ago), but you’ve totally forgotten how to upload it, or fear you’re going to “break your website”. Wouldn’t it be great to know you can pop into the backend, and upload your work, and never have to rely on someone else to do it for you?

Feeling confident about making video and using social media.

Video is imperative for the “know, like a trust” element of growing your Private Practice, but many Clinicians hold back from or give up on, making video, because they don’t know how to edit it, and believe they have to get their message out in one take (which is pretty much impossible for most people).

Making attractive-looking social posts (when you’re not a trained designer) can also feel overwhelming.?But what if you got familiar with some really easy-to-use video and graphics tools, that we specifically designed for non-designers? You could be creating eye-catching and engaging content that could help you to rapidly increase awareness of your clinical brand.

We’ve all had to start at the beginning when it comes to learning tech skills. The brilliant news, however, is that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. There are hundreds of free, online resources to help you get up to speed. Google any tech question, and someone will have either written a “how-to” guide, or posted a video on YouTube about it.

Looking for more help? If you’re struggling with tech, or need to get GDPR compliant, we can help – drop me an email at [email protected] .

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