Improving the patient environment

"In the spirit of PDSAs, I am submitting one "small" step in the multitude of changes we have made (and will make) at our practice as a result of being involved in the APCC program...

Our waiting room is relatively small, but its walls have always been filled with many posters and signs. Following one of the APCC workshops, we returned home and decided to create an electronic noticeboard.

Ingredients:
1. One old laptop
2. PowerPoint
3. PDF converter software
4. TV screen with wall bracket and cabling
5. One practice principal with an interest in IT and in being a handyman!

Recipe:
• Strip waiting room walls of existing posters/signs.
• Download posters from the Internet where possible and use PDF converter software to turn these into PowerPoint slides; create versions of remaining posters/signs as PowerPoint slides; add some slides of beautiful scenery (so patients can momentarily dream that they are in South America and not in a doctors waiting room in Dubbo)
• Mount wall bracket, mount TV screen onto wall bracket
• Run cable from TV screen up through ceiling, across ceiling space, and down to laptop hidden in cupboard
• Run repeated PowerPoint presentation throughout the day
• Delegate one receptionist task of maintaining electronic noticeboard slides
• Stick back a few posters/signs on areas of walls that require a re-touch paint job!" Dubbo Family Doctors, NSW.