The importance of conversations about interiors and exteriors in Dental practice design

As a practitioner, your work has always been the foundation of your practice. How your practice is experienced is likely to have been, while important, a secondary factor. This pause we are experiencing with COVID-19 is a time to think about how to make your patient’s experience the top priority of your practice. 

The exterior and interior of your practice need to be at the core of your practice in order to move into the patient-centric model of the future. Offering your patients the best in dental care and the best in holistic care – by treating the body and mind, is the way forward.

Design for practical means

Interior design can be used as a tool to alleviate stress factors in the practice for your staff as many of these factors are influenced by operational and environmental issues. Inefficient workflows, crowding due to spatial factors and harsh lighting conditions aren’t conducive to a calm, well-ordered environment – the lack of control over these factors will negatively affect performance as well as psychological needs.

Addressing the needs of yourself and your employees will employ the science of ergonomics – identifying and addressing workflow and layout solutions that will exceed expectations. Providing a comfortable, naturally lit environment for your staff will boost morale and performance exponentially.

Exterior to the interior as a journey

The holistic design offers the chance to create a continuous and calming journey for your patients by treating interiors and exteriors synergistically. 

The threshold holds a special fascination for architects. A doorway, hall, or garden is a spatial manifestation of transition between two phases and can make all the difference in the experience of both. In the design of dental-care spaces, where a patient may literally enter in one state and exit in another, the threshold is particularly important.

The architecture of your dental practice should achieve a few vital things; it should be a natural extension of who you are as a practitioner, it should express to the patient that you care about their experience and it should be aesthetically pleasing. Like two sides to a coin, the interior design should continue this narrative. As an integrated practice, OPTIMA can provide cohesiveness between the exterior architecture and interior design of your practice.

Design for beauty

When sensory elements are balanced and complimentary it transforms us –  affecting our senses, our brain and our stress hormones. We may not know the mechanisms as to why but we feel beauty. 

By the means of natural daylight, biophilia, art, beautiful furniture and colour you can shape your patients experience of your practice as well as their mood. As a practitioner, it is pertinent that you be the catalyst for change. By these means, you can alleviate stress and provide the experience that causes a disconnect from a patient’s past memories of cold, clinical and dehumanised dental visits. 

As important is the feeling that being in a pleasing, organised atmosphere generates – you feel lifted, you feel valued. Thus separating yourself from the competition as a Dentist who takes pride in assuring your patients feel valued.

Optima is here to guide you through taking your practice to the next level, call us for a free consultation today.

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