Every business is a nightmare to get started and maintain. There’ll be teething problems, shifty stakeholders, grumpy clients, dissatisfied employees, disappointing financial projections and more teething problems than a two-year-old suffering through its first set of gnashers.
But if you’re opening a clothing shop or a newsagent, for instance, the dangers are purely financial. Maybe enough people won’t hand over cash or your stock will arrive late, but realistically that’ll be the extent of your woes.
Just imagine opening a company in which people could potentially get harmed if you didn’t maintain it properly. Imagine yourself in a courtroom as you try to explain why you’ve made clients ill, or why there were toxic substance sitting in the car park behind your business.
This might seem like a distant prospect for a fashion retailer – but it’s the stark reality of running a doctor’s practice.
While an inherently worthy and satisfying pursuit, you’re always dicing with disaster if you allow the hygiene in your doctor’s practice to become lax.
So let’s step away from traditional businesses for this article and focus on medical practices for a while. What extra risks do they have to be conscious of?
Waste
While you might throw your rubbish away without much thought, your average medical practice has to consider every facet of its waste collection process. This is because toxic waste, including needles and blood samples, can cause serious infection and disease if they aren’t wasted correctly.
Needles, for instance, will need a sharps container to ensure that no one receives a cut that’ll infect them with a nasty disease (the potential for HIV or Hepatitis is just one major risk).
Yet stories abound in your local newspaper of practices that have failed to dispose of waste properly. These places will, however, receive nothing but a bad reputation and are not to be emulated.
Patient delays
We’ve all been in a crowded doctor’s office. People snotting onto their jumpers, coughing as though they’ve got the black lung, looking paler than a goth whose been trapped in a sensory deprivation tank for 15 days – needless to say, it’s not an enjoyable place to be.
You might not realise it but medical practices have to put a lot of thought into the amount of time people are left in a waiting room, not least because it’s a hotbed of germs.
If you’re opening a medical practice, you’ll have to consider the level of service people are receiving before they see their doctor.
But there’s a lot more to opening a successful doctor’s practice. If you‘ve got any ideas of your own, let us know in the comments section.