Waiting Room or Reception Area
Does your dental office have a Waiting Room or a Reception Area? Merely a matter of semantics? Perhaps, but then again, if you were a patient which would you rather walk into and spend time in, a place that is warm and inviting and makes you feel comfortable and glad you came, or a holding area crowded with others similarly waiting for their turn?
As part of a well planned dental office design the goal is to create a Reception Area that greets your patients, makes them feel at home, relaxes them, and gets them ready for their treatment time. As part of a well run dental practice you don’t want your patients waiting any longer than is absolutely necessary. If you have patients waiting for very long, there is something going wrong in your operation that needs to be addressed. Of course, I realize that sometimes, things go awry, but those need to be the exception and not the rule.
“But, my patients always bring family members along with them that need to hang out in the Waiting Room,” you say. That may be all well and good, but again, would you rather them be waiting in a cold, sterile pen, like so many cattle waiting to be lead to slaughter, crowded with others similarly uncomfortable or in a Reception Area that makes them comfortable, offers them a refreshing beverage and provides them interesting viewing and/or reading material? Which brings me to my next point.
Whoever thought watching videos of dental procedures while sitting in the Reception Area is a good idea is out of their mind! No one wants to be reminded of possible dental problems and no one, other than perhaps the guy that made the video really wants to see the inside of people’s mouths! Such videos need to be reserved for educational opportunities one-on-one with your patients in a Consultation Room and not shown on continuous feed to everyone in the Reception Area. Seeing these things just builds anxiety in patients.
So, take a look at your dental office and ask yourself, “Do I have a Waiting Room or a Reception Area?” If your answer is the first, perhaps you’ll want to be planning to take a good, hard look at making changes to your dental office design in 2010.
