I recently went to my local medical practice for my annual blood test.

Just as I attend my dentist regularly for routine hygiene appointments, I believe that ignoring the need to have regular blood tests is a FAST TRACK to poor health.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and with aging, blood indicators can give early insight to the presence of conditions not visible from the outside.

But that’s not the point of my article.

At my local GP medical practice, the location has terrible WIFI reception to public access WIFI.

It’s non-existent.

You may as well not even bother looking at your device to read emails, news, or view videos.

And despite the fact when you [as a patient] search for a WIFI network and you see that the medical practice has multiple locked WIFI accounts that they use, the staff don’t allow patients to access the practice WIFI accounts.

So you have to read a magazine…

But the problem is, the medical practice doesn’t provide magazines for their patients to read either…

Not like in the good old days before the internet, where every doctor or dentist was judged more by the quality and currency of their waiting room reading material than they were by their bedside or chairside manner…

And I get it, that during the dim dark years of the COVID 19 pandemic that waiting room magazines [along with golf course flagsticks] were considered to be super spreaders of the virus and had to be removed from public contact to protect the public….

But the pandemic is over now…

The point I’m raising here is that if you run a business where your customers sometimes [or most times] have to wait before they see you, then it really is an opportunity to WOW THEM rather than make them feel as though they are being remanded in custody at the local lock up.

Doesn’t that make sense?

So at this medical practice, the waiting patients are subjected to radio music from an AM radio station, and though the music is mostly pleasant, it is distractingly annoying if by chance you happen to be trying to concentrate and read a book that you’ve brought along with you [because you know that they don’t provide access to WIFI and they don’t provide magazines to read]

Lastly, at this medical practice, since my previous visit, they have removed a bank of five [joined together] waiting room chairs from this one waiting area, leaving only five seats [joined together] to service patients for two doctors and a pathologist.

Which has left insufficient seating…

Which means that for someone like me who was there because I wasn’t sick, I had to sit very close to someone who was coughing regularly and obviously was sick to some degree…

I guess next time I visit that medical practice I’ll wear a mask… and I’ll bring earplugs too.

As well as my book…

[Though shouldn’t the sick people going to the doctor be made to wear masks?]

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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business