When patients don’t need an hour’s appointment
When I was training, the only appointment model we were introduced to by the University was the traditional one hour, to one and a half hour, slot that took a case history on the first appointment, and subsequently would spend a fair amount of time at follow ups discussing the patient’s symptoms and progress in depth. For most patients this is fine and appropriate.
But what about if a patient just has a cold?
Or a sore throat?
Or can’t sleep?
Or has just discovered they have athlete’s foot?
Yes, it may well be that some symptoms may herald a deeper problem, but the man-in-the-street isn’t thinking like that.
The man-in-the-street isn’t wanting to pay for a full hour’s plunge into their past medical history, diet, drug/medication history, and a run-down of every system in his body when he could go and get some Lemsip from Sainsbury’s. [I am not advocating Lemsip [or Sainsbury’s here] just an example of an attempt at a popular fix].
How about he could turn up at a herbalist and say, ‘got anything for a cold?’ and the herbalist could just ask obvious questions such as are you on any medication? etc [like they do in Boot’s, incidentally] and hand over 100mls of a tincture, or 100g of a tea, and a chest rub, or whatnot, with ease? How about completely bypassing the handcuffs of not being able to dispense without a full consultation for really simple stuff?
It might be difficult to manage from a private herbalist’s practice like mine where I only see people by appointment – but I could set aside a specific time of day, or day of the week where people could just turn up without an appointment.
I’m thinking of trying to introduce this at the School of Herbal Medicine’s Clinic, so it would be more of a shop feature like Neal’s Yard once practiced, or that Boot’s still do.
I have a feeling that if we could do this then herbal medicine wouldn’t be seen as something strange, expensive and inaccessible.
In fact, before I qualified, I did some clinical hours at a herbalist’s in Scarborough and she practised in this way by having a full herbalist’s dispensary within a health food shop structure [see photo]. She was able to chat to people, get to know them, and dispense a suitable remedy without any fuss. In some cases they were so impressed by how well it worked that they would come back for other things, and eventually end up making a full hour, to an hour and a half, appointment to get their health back on track or address an ongoing deeper issue.
Because, unless we can make herbal medicine available to people-in-the-street, it may well continue to only be used by people who have the time and disposable income to do so. And that would be such a shame.
