Entry: The Clinic should be easy to identify from the main street. Put clear sign boards, so that the patient can locate your clinic without asking anyone. If the clinic is not on the main road, or is inside a large building complex, put up boards with arrows.
The boards should be freshly painted every year and should be cleaned every week by the compounder. The state of the board indicates the degree of alertness of the doctor.
The main board must bear the name of your clinic, your name and degree, your speciality if any and the clinic timings. It should not be too large.
The waiting room: Your patient spends 5 minutes with you, and probably fifty minutes n the waiting room. So, you must see to the comfort in the waiting room. Sit in the waiting room and have a feel the room.
A warm welcome creates the first good impression about your service. So the receptionist or the compounder must be taught to welcome the patient with a smile and affection, and give them proper attention. Be strict about cleanliness. The floor and furniture in the waiting room must be spotlessly clean and neatly arranged.
Fan or Air conditioner, Air-fresheners, Drinking water, and if you keep the patients for applying I.V. fluids, then a clean toilet. Use the toilet yourself, so that everyone keeps it clean.
Entertainment in the waiting room: Put patient education posters on the wall. Put articles on Medical topics from magazines and Newspapers that would be of interest to your patients.
If you have participated in any service camps, blood donation camps or social work, put up your photographs and Newspaper cuttings about such events.
If you have written any health related articles in magazines, put them up on the wall.
You can prepare your own patient education pamplets and distribute them or just make them available for reading in the waiting room.
Keep local newspaper, some entertainment agazines and News magazines, but let the issues be recent – not torn and out of dat as in a hair-cutting saloon.
If you have more of a pediatric practice, keep some children’s books andnon-noisy toys.
Your Assistants: Spend time to teach your compounder/secretaries/Nurses – on how to talk and behave with the patients, how to answer telephone calls, how to explain prescriptions etc.
These assistants in a G.P.’s clinic are often less educated, so training them is extremely important, if you want your patients to be well treated by them. And the beat wasy to teach is to demonstrate to them and then make themtalk to the patients in your presence. Never think they will learn by themelves, or by looking at the older compounder.
In the Examination room : Welcome the patient with a smile and empathy.
Greet the patient with his or her name.
You should always be well dressed and well groomed, be it any time of the day.
Have a LARG mirror hung over young washbasin, so that you are constantly aware about your look.
Patients feel half better just by seeing the doctor. If you wearing a proper dress and smile help your patients to get better sooner, then you must take time and trouble over the way look. No shabby, tired looks please. And you must look as neat and fresh to the last patient of the evening. As you looked to the first patient in the morning.
The most important thing the patient looks for in you, is how much you care for him. It must be seen in your eyes, your smile andyour body language.
When the patient is narrating his problems, look into his eyes. Do not avoid eye contac.t never do anything else simulataneously not even writing notes. Patients want you to give your full, undivided attention.
Examination room should be isolated by proper partitions. what the patients talk, should not be overheard by other waiting patients.
After the patient’s complaints are dealt with, do make a conversation about the health of other family members – especially children and old persons. The Doctor who remembers the names of all family members from an ordinary General Practitioner to the beloved family Doctor, and that should be the ultimate aim of every General Practitioner
