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Clinical Reference Systems: Pediatric Advisor 10.0
Advice to Health Care Professionals on Using Parent Handouts
in the Office
Everyone on the office team can be involved with helping
parents obtain appropriate handouts. The office staff can
use handouts to better utilize waiting time both in the
waiting room and the exam rooms.
- In the waiting room.
A menu of selected handouts can be posted on the office
bulletin board. Parents can request them from the front
desk. They can also print copies of their own if a
copying machine and a binder containing selected
handouts are available. During epidemics or seasonal
illness, stacks of relevant handouts can be placed in
the waiting room (e.g., influenza, hay fever,
chickenpox). Just as toys are essential for children in
the waiting room, so is reading material for the
parents.
- After nursing contact.
After the nurse processes the patient and puts her into
the exam room, she can provide one or two handouts that
are appropriate for the child's illness. Selected
handouts can be stocked in the exam room (e.g., fever,
diarrhea, colds). The parent then can read the handout
while waiting for the physician. A good spin-off of
this procedure is that it reduces the number of routine
questions the parent will have for the physician.
- After physician contact.
After the physician has examined the patient and made a
specific diagnosis, he can write down or mark on a
checklist the handout (e.g., asthma, bronchiolitis,
pneumonia, or croup) that he wants the parents to
receive. These can be printed from the computer and
given to the parent at the appointment desk. The front
desk staff or the physician should write in the
patient's name at the top of the handout, because this
gesture makes it more likely that the family will read
it.
- During the first visit.
Some of the instruction sheets cover minor illnesses
that are universal and that every child acquires on
multiple occasions. These include cough, sore throat,
diarrhea, fever, and others. These parent handouts can
be given out as a packet on the first office visit.
Thereafter they can be referred to for home treatment
and save the health care provider considerable telephone
time in discussing them.
- By mail.
When parents call in requesting information about
particular topics, often these can be mailed out.
Examples are Lyme disease, ADD, bedwetting, and
sleepwalking.
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