Losing a valued member of the medical practice team.

Losing a valued member of your staff can be disruptive, painful, and costly to your medical practice. And despite your best intentions and impeccable employee management policies and skills, things will happen beyond your control, and people move on. Being prepared for that possibility will help you minimize and contain the damage and move your practice forward. This article suggests 15 strategies that you can use to mitigate the effects of losing a valued employee. These include strategies to protect your practice's interests and several that will smooth the transition for your remaining staff. This article also describes 10 ways that losing a valued employee can impact a practice. It offers 10 additional strategies to help you cope with the death of an employee, one of the most difficult challenges a practice manager may ever face. This article further suggests several easy-to-implement practice management techniques that will help you soften the blow of employee turnover. It offers a sample farewell letter to announce an employee's departure from your practice and suggests six knowledge transfer questions to ask before the employee leaves. Finally, this article provides a comprehensive list of more than 30 thoughtful, eye-opening, and revealing questions that you can ask in an employee exit interview or exit survey.