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Hospital Report

This document summarizes an observation of a clinic waiting room and identifies opportunities to improve the patient experience. It notes that patients spend 30-40 minutes waiting to see the doctor after initial registration. An assistant system could help occupy patients during this idle time by providing useful information. However, many older patients are hesitant of technology. Any assistant system would need to have a simple, non-technical interface like a virtual character to address these concerns while still facilitating the waiting room process. Further testing is needed to design an effective solution.

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Adejugbe Adegoke
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281 views3 pages

Hospital Report

This document summarizes an observation of a clinic waiting room and identifies opportunities to improve the patient experience. It notes that patients spend 30-40 minutes waiting to see the doctor after initial registration. An assistant system could help occupy patients during this idle time by providing useful information. However, many older patients are hesitant of technology. Any assistant system would need to have a simple, non-technical interface like a virtual character to address these concerns while still facilitating the waiting room process. Further testing is needed to design an effective solution.

Uploaded by

Adejugbe Adegoke
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Waiting room observation and possible solution to improve the

experience
Summary:

This report presents the observation of patient activities during Monday morning. The
activity within the waiting room is particularly observed because the observation is
restricted within that area. The first thing patients have to do when they come to the
clinic is to talk to the receptionist and some of them have done appointment with
receptionist which reduces that time and they just need to provide their name. When
the nurse is ready they will be called and go inside another room. After that they have
to wait for approximately half an hour to see the doctor. Six patients visited the clinic
of geriatrics in BMC Ambulatory Care Center during the hour from 9:30am –
10:30am, 4 female and 2 male. As for the ethics, there are three whites and 3 blacks.
They have to bring their insurance card/medical card with them and fill out one form
before they meet the doctors.

Detailed activities:

The registration takes 4-5 minutes between patients and nurse in another room out of
the waiting room which is beyond the reach of this observation.

1. The patient come to the reception desk to tell the receptionist his/her name,
that’s enough information for initial work (if s/he made appointment in
advance);
2. Patient waits for 3-4 minutes in the waiting room and takes some time reading
the form, it takes longer time if the patient comes later than the appointed time;
3. After getting the patient’s name, the nurse goes inside another room to inform
the nurse one patient needs to be looked after, it usually takes 1-2 minutes,
patient come during that time looks a little confused because there’s no one at
the reception desk;
4. The receptionist comes out, washes her hand and gets back to reception desk;
5. The patient are called by the nurse to do registration which takes around 2-3
minutes;
6. After registration, there is approximately 30 – 40 minutes waiting before being
called by the nurse to see the doctors.
7. The time patient with doctor is beyond the observation as the first patient of
the observation is still inside the doctor’s room until the end of the observation.

There could be a suggestion that the process can be simplified so that the nurse, the
receptionist, the doctor and the patient would have better experience during busy time.

Possible requirement of assistant system

Most of the time, patients just sit silently in the waiting room and there is no
communication with other patients, although some of them have conversations but
only with their companions. However, the patients gradually become talkative during
the interview and the conversation expands to a group talk attended by other patients
as the interview continues. It can be seen in the observation that the patients in the
waiting room have enough time to do something more interesting. Such as interacting
with some application and get some useful information which can help first and
secondary “stakeholders”[1] of the system to save time and to have better experience.

Problems

Learning from the interview, the altitudes of older adults towards computer
technology are more conservative comparing with younger adults. The patients feel
happy when the doctors explain everything patiently to them, although they forget
something back home. They would like to get all the information from the doctors
rather than high-tech machines (i.e. computers) because they consider people more
trustful but machines too complicated. However, “virtual character” can be an
alternative choice of interaction between older patients and machines which faces less
negative altitudes.

“I attended computer classes six years ago and stopped after a few times, which I
think is difficult to catch up with”…”Even the touch screen is too difficult”…”virtual
character could be accepted but I still prefer my doctor” by an older patient in the
waiting room.

However, some computer assistance is required during such busy hours which can
facilitate the waiting room process. Hence, here comes the problem of system design
of such assistance: positive requirement from clinics but reluctant altitudes from
patients.

Possible solutions:

Some assistant system in the waiting room should be designed carefully which looks
attractive and as simple as possible. In some circumstances, sound output and speech
recognition need to be considered helping people with visual impairment or moving
disability. In the meantime, privacy protection needs to be considered especially when
sound output is adopted. Users may choose using ear phones or muting the volume if
necessary.

Conclusion:

This report presented the observation of activities in the clinic during busy hours.
Following, it is discussed that some assistant system is required in that waiting room
but facing some problems to implement the plan. There are possible solutions on this
specific issue but further observation and evaluation are needed to push forward this
project.
Reference:

A., Dix, Human-Computer Interaction, third edition, Prentice Hall, England, 2004

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