How should staff deal with loud children in oral surgeon office lobby?
I am the office manager at an oral surgeon's office and the staff is telling me that there is a problem with the patients being annoyed by loud children in the lobby. This is when the patient is in the lobby and in the room with the doctor.
What should the staff do when children are being children.... :
(Below are some of my initial thoughts)
Inform the parent (before the appointment) that if they will be bringing children with them to the visit, we ask them to bring someone along to care for the children.
If they are being loud: Have our staff tell the parent that the child is interfering with the surgeons and to ask the child if they are hungry or thirsty and if not, suggest to the patient that maybe taking them for a walk outside and returning in a few minutes might help.
Any thoughts?
(3)3 Comments
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For children who are just accompanying parents who are patients, you could ask patients not to bring children on their visits, or to bring another caregiver.
Other possibilities: redecorate the lobby to have soft, sound absorbing surfaces instead of hard, sound reflecting surfaces; reorganize walls or partitions to reduce the transfer of sound from the lobby to the rooms with the doctors.
If the doctors mention the noise, then I'd definitely pass that along to the parents as well. It's more difficult to make an appropriate judgement with patients, since some adults who dislike kids may not be realistic about what level of noise to expect.
If the office expects a lot of children, some inexpensive things to keep children busy can be very helpful. Some suggestions:
1) A small table with papers and crayons.
2) Some interesting posters in the wall (think colorful, eye-catching)
3) A small aquarium with few fishes.
Could you simply hand them an ipad or something alike to play with? Nothing quiets a child more quickly than a video or some interesting games. Or maybe a tv-dvd with some cartoons?
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