Apr
28
Written by:
admin
4/28/2008 3:07 PM
Firstly a quick explanation of the layout of the practice and practice resources.
Four general practitioners and five secretarial staff, no practice nurse, small waiting room, no spare room for performing pre-consultation assessment.
Fortunately, there was a small area at the end of a corridor where we already have a set of scales and a height measuring device.
To save time during consultation I endeavored to implement a pre-consultation weight and height check.
By simply printing the data collection sheet from the pop-up alternative prompts application at the beginning of the session I had a simple mechanism to direct patients to perform their own weight and height measurements. This involved front desk staff to simply hand the patient a pencil and a cutout from the data collection sheet and directing them to the corridor with the weight and height measuring equipment.
We generally have only one front desk receptionist with two doctors. This means the receptionist is as busy or probably more busy than the doctors. It took a little bit of encouragement for the secretaries to take on the new task, but they have done so admirably and have found it to be very easy. They generally explain to the patient the requirement to measure weight and height every two years and give a brief explanation of the tasks to be performed by the patient.
The benefits of this approach are automatic data collection of weight and height for patients have not had their waist and height documented for the previous two years [per then Red Book Guidelines], reduced time to collect such data, involvement of the patient and satisfaction in completing Red Book Guidelines for weight and height.
I am still trialing this new data collection method and have found it to be beneficial. We have had no complaints from patients and in fact patients seem very accepting for pre-consultation measurement of basics such as weight and height.