What's in Your Waiting Room?

The article, Physicians’ Perspective and Influence on Patient Education Resources Used in the Waiting Room reviews a 20-item survey of 50 family physicians about their office waiting rooms. No surprise to find that the doctors who had ownership of the practice were more interested in what happens in the waiting room. Should it be an educational place or a place for relaxing prior to the stress of an office visit? Male doctors were more interested in waiting room activities than were female doctors. The authors admit to having a limited sample size and the lack of disclosure of the total number of people sent the survey resulted in a patient response rate not being available.

A review article, The Diagnosis and Treatment of Erectile Dysfunction is included this month, and reviews risk factors, pathophysiology, and standard treatments.

We continue to present our Clinical Images column and this month feature Pediatric Axillary Rash.

An excellent review article this month reviews the definition and evaluation of abnormal weight loss. This is a disturbing finding in clinical practice when it is determined the patient is not trying to lose weight. Concerns for occult malignancy are high while other metabolic diseases can usually be quickly evaluated with laboratory studies.

We run the results of a survey indicating that health care providers think electronic nicotine delivery systems are addicting. They recruited a small group that included physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants to complete their survey. Helping patients quit smoking is a large part of care as an osteopathic family physician but moving a smoking patient to e-cigarettes is not smoking cessation.

So, if you have not been one to spend time in your waiting room - sit there for a few minutes. See what reading material is in that area. Is it what you want your patients to read while waiting to see you? If not, remove it and add materials you find helpful to patients. We are considering improvement of that area as many of our patients arrive by bus and spend a long time in our waiting room.