Are the robots taking over the waiting rooms of medical walk-in clinics?

Sure seems that way.

Gone is the welcoming smile from the receptionist checking you in.

Gone is the warm human voice acknowledging your presence.

Gone is the human eye contact reassuring you are in caring hands.

Now you are confronted with the same glass-enclosed reception desk. However…

Instead of seeing smiles, you see the former receptionists as robots focusing on their data-entry skills.

Instead of feeling hopeful you feel helpless, stunned at the prospect of your initial healers — the receptionists — virtually burying their heads in the proverbial sand like an ostrich.

Instead of finding a shoulder to lean on you have to settle for a cold shoulder.

And now feeling ignored at best and disrespected at least, the Walk-In’s peeve meter is skyrocketing.

Exasperated, the Walk- In looks up to the ceiling with a forlorn eyes as if imploring some guardian angel to swoop down and save him from this frigid foray into cyberspace.

Now. wincing at the heightened pain in his arm that initially brought him to this clinic, the Walk-In sees a sign pointing to a kiosk off to the right.The tiny-screened tablet invites the patient to SIGN IN.

Add insult to injury. Now the Walk-In struggles to remember his or her cell phone number (since he left the phone in his vehicle). Then his technical misery got worse when the machine won’t accept your sign-in without the phone number.

Frustrated, the Walk-In erupted in a verbal lashing at the technology. The Walk-In’s outburst finally alarms the robots sitting behind the glass wall.

One of those robots — (a.ka data-input tech, formerly known as a medical receptionist) — perfunctorily tries to coach the Walk-In to sign in.

The Walk-In virtually fumbles the keyboard and finally in frustration blurts out to the robot standing next to him in front of the tablet-on-a-stick: “You do it!”

Humiliated, the Walk-In finally sits down in the waiting room. The robot returns to its post.

And now “freed” from “redundant” sign-in procedures, the receptionist-turned-robot can then get back to “more value-added activities, such as patient financial counseling and marketing of preventative care services to patients,” according to one supplier of sign-in technology for medical clinics.

Highly efficient? Of course.
Highly effective? Not really.

There has to be a more constructive way to serve the bottom line.

That’s why most effective leaders seek to balance the need for both efficiency and effectiveness.

They understand cyber tools are to enhance the human experience not take a byte out the human spirit in general and healing in particular.

And the most effective leaders readily embrace the significance that new computers and tablets etc. always comes with some sort of a MAN-ual.

For more ideas on integrating a sense of humanity in deploying technology, purchase a 300-page book now available on Amazon. com filled with 77 short stories (5-minute reads called Leadership Mints) on examples from business, sports and politics.

It’s titled: LOVING Like a Leader with Empathy- one of three books in The Leadership Mints Series designed to help leaders refresh their feeling for leading. And as a bonus, the postscript titled- BUSINESS: A HUMAN EXPERIENCE — shares the impetus for this book on empathy impacting the bottom line.

The two other books in The Leadership Mints Series -now available on Amazon.com — include THINKING Like a Leader with Clarity and SPEAKING Like a Leader with Civility