Standard operating procedure

A standard operating procedure, or SOP, is a written, specific description of how a task should be performed in the practice (how a new patient call is answered, how a room is turned over between patients, how a treatment plan is presented) detailed enough that a competent new team member could follow it without needing the exact same person to train them every time. It is the difference between a practice that runs on tribal knowledge held in a few people's heads and one that runs on a documented system anyone can execute.

The case for SOPs is not bureaucracy for its own sake; it is what makes a practice able to survive turnover, onboard new hires quickly, and deliver a consistent patient experience regardless of which team member happens to be working that day. A practice with no written SOPs is quietly betting its consistency on specific individuals never leaving, which is a bet that eventually loses.

Building SOPs works best one task at a time, starting with the highest-impact or highest-turnover roles first, rather than attempting to document the entire practice at once: a partial set of SOPs that actually gets used beats a comprehensive manual that gets written once and never opened again.