Have you ever given a thought to
the sight lines from your waiting room? If the answer's
"no" you're certainly not alone. But hopefully your
office isn't like the one a southern Ontario family
doctor used to practise in before he renovated: from
certain seats in the waiting room, patients actually
had a clear view of the exam table.
That's exactly the kind of thing
that Jan Mok of JES Design, a firm based just outside
Toronto, has been working to eradicate in her more than
20 years of designing medical offices.
OFFICE
AUTOBAHN
"A lot of doctors I work with have a huge number of
patients and they need to see them very quickly," says
Ms Mok. "So it's good to have an efficient traffic flow
in mind when the office is laid out." In other words,
you want folks to go from seated to treated in as few
steps as possible.
Leasing is very expensive —
particularly for urban MDs, adds Ms Mok — so you
want to get your money's worth and use the space efficiently.
"You don't want to get the rooms too large or too small.
This is a particularly important consideration for exam
rooms — the size and the location of these rooms
is critical."
EXAM
ROOM CHECKUP
It's not all about size, though. You also have to pay
attention to how things are laid out in each of the
rooms you use. "You always want to position the exam
table according to whether the doctor is left- or right-handed
so you make sure their orientation to the exam table
is correct," says Ms Mok. Another thing to consider
is the time it takes to get from the sink or cabinet
to the exam table — you shouldn't have to take
more than a couple of steps. Ms Mok also suggests putting
a very small desk surface in the exam room. "How all
this is arranged in relation to the room is critical
to the function of the space," she explains.
So just how many of these perfectly
appointed exam rooms should you have? "I would say there
should be at least two exam rooms per physician plus
what we call swing rooms in group practices," says Ms
Mok. "A swing room is a spare room that you use for
overflow."
DOC
DOCKS
"Where space is at a premium I like to put in what I
call doctors' stand-up stations — which have a
computer, telephone and writing surface for updating
files," says Ms Mok. She tends to put them in a little
recess or alcove in the hallway (see floor plans below).
That way, you can have somewhere to jot down notes or
make a call between patients without having to go back
to your private office or tie up an exam room. "You
put them in critical areas and they aren't assigned
to a particular physician — any MD can use them.
And as a bonus when they're standing in this alcove
they're not blocking traffic," explains Ms Mok. She
feels one of these stations per two physicians in a
group is ideal.
POUND
FOOLISH
If you fall into the category of doctors who don't have
sufficient exam room space, the obvious thing to do
is carve out some of your front office. That's a big
mistake, says Ms Mok.
"Doctors can get into a lot of
trouble with scrimping on the front reception area —
the business area," she warns. "There's a high volume
of people there, and the workers need space in order
to process the patients." So no matter how tempting
it may be to cut back on waiting room seating or your
employees' workspace, remember that you risk ending
up with people waiting in corridors and frustrated staffers
working in cramped quarters.
TRYING
PATIENTS' PATIENCE
Queues are here to stay. But that doesn't mean the time
your patients spend waiting must be torture. First off,
it's easy to make your office kid-friendly.
"I would highly recommend a play
area in the waiting room of a general practitioners'
office — visible from the main waiting area but
off in a corner so the children don't bother the other
patients," says Ms Mok. She also likes having what she
calls an "information area" with magazines — so
they aren't just lying all over the place — and
pamphlets. "I'd build this into the wall so it isn't
using up precious floor space," she suggests.
Once you've got everything in place,
you've got to consider the atmosphere. There's a fine
line between tranquility and tense, eerie silence and
MD waiting rooms often find themselves on the wrong
side of this divide. Is there any way to make the space
a little more cheery?
"Rather than have continuous linear
seating I try to have small clusters of seats so you
don't have the 'streetcar effect' where you are sitting
staring straight across from people," says Ms Mok. "It
sometimes also helps to put chairs on angles. All this
just makes the waiting room a friendlier place."
Jan Mok of JES Design can be reached
at [email protected] or 905-716-4309
One of Jan Mok's designs for a
family practice. Note the physician stations.
Courtesy: JES Design
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