Our 5 best tips to creating a perfect consultation room

1. WHERE?

The consultation room must be an easily accessible room straight off the pharmacy sales floor, it must be clearly visible to the public, with wide door access for wheelchair users, which should be a minimum 0f 900mm clear opening width.

This should be a purpose made professional space that underlines the pharmacies commitment to providing excellent healthcare services for its customers.

2. HOW BIG

Every pharmacy is different, the size and shape of the pharmacy vary every time, and so the consultation room must adapt to this space too. That doesn’t mean our customers should be expected to squeeze into a tiny space.

This is a professional healthcare space, so it must be sized appropriately.

We recommend that the room should accommodate up to three people comfortably, why 3? your space should easily accommodate your healthcare technician, the customer, and in some cases their chaperone.

Bearing in mind that some of your customers may be wheelchair users, it is essential that the consultation room should be DDA compliant too.

So how big should these spaces be and what could they look like?

Let’s consider a consultation room being used for blood pressure monitoring, flu vaccinations, new medicines service, supervised medicines, and weight management, then typically, we would suggest a minimum space requirement of around 2 x 2.5m. if your planning to provide additional healthcare services, perhaps you would like to invite visiting local healthcare practitioners like, podiatrists for example, then they will need a treatment bench or couch too, so your space will need to be larger still. in this case we would suggest a minimum of 2.7m x 2.5m but a larger space would be preferred if you can.

 3. CONFIDENTIALITY

Our patients and customers expect privacy. they must be confident that they are able to discuss their medical matters with complete confidentiality.

The days of a pull round curtain are long gone. With modern building materials and methods, confidential rooms can be achieved with relative ease, and without breaking the bank.

4. PURPOSE MADE SPACE

Our Consultation room should be well equipped with bespoke cupboards worktops, wash hand basin soap and towel dispensers. Everything a patent would expect to see in a proper healthcare space.

The look and feel of the room must ooze healthcare

The room should be light, bright, well decorated and appointed, so perhaps think about the colour scheme and what would help create a clinical calming space that your customers would be comfortable to visit.

Today’s savvy customers expect a professional well-presented clean and tidy space to receive their healthcare advice and services, so investing in the right fit out is a must.

5. A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

Now that you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of creating your consultation room, you need to keep it that way, let’s not let it turn into a surplus stock room, it must be ready and available for a consultation at any time.

When you look in your consultation room, is there anything there that shouldn’t be? If so, remove it, refrain from sticking notices on the wall unless you have a specific notice board to pin too.

You will want to have a range of leaflets available for your customer, and these can be accommodated neatly with the use of Perspex leaflet holders, which help to keep everything in shape. a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Use the cupboards for items which shouldn’t be on the surfaces, always keep it fresh clean and tidy.

The consultation room is a key part of your pharmacy business, it just must be right, and investing in this space is essential, so take these steps and see your pharmacy services fly

A FINAL THOUGHT

If you’re thinking of creating or refurbishing a consultation room, before you start think deeply about what services you want to provide, what does this space have to do for you, how will this consultation room pay its way. What equipment do you need to provide, what will the space look like.

Time spent planning any new space will save you time effort and money later if you have to change things when contractors are on site, failing to plan is planning to fail, so work out everything in advance.