5 Ideas to Improve Your Dentist Waiting Room TV

People today expect slick digital experiences when using their local healthcare services – and going to the dentist is no exception.

Using digital signage in your dental surgery is a great way to improve patient experience, reduce staff stress and upsell products and services. A dentist waiting room TV also provides the perfect way to share updates on queue times, as well as forming part of a vibrant wayfinding system that seamlessly directs patients to the right place at the right time.

Digital signage apps help make content creation easy, and a made for purpose CMS like ScreenCloud provides all the tools to set up and manage your content. So, if you already have some screens setup, or you're thinking of creating a signage network (check out our hardware selector to see how you can easily get them on ScreenCloud), it’s time to make your waiting room a memorable experience – for the right reasons.

1. Introduce dentists and their assistants

For new patients and existing ones, using your digital screens to introduce your team members is a great way to put patients at ease and familiarize themselves with your team. Using Meet the Team app you can create a Google Sheet that lists all of your dentists, their job titles and a profile photo. You can even use the quote field to add their credentials.

This helps to build better, more trusting relationships from the moment that a patient arrives in your dental practice for treatment.

2. Create digital sign reminders

Dental surgeries of days gone by were packed with notices, bulletins and posters of all shapes and sizes. While this gives patients something to read while waiting, the information can be overwhelming. It also results in a lot of extra admin time for staff in terms of printing, posting and re-organizing wall displays.

By contrast, digital screens are effectively an intuitive noticeboard that can be used to display text signs and notices which help patients stay up to date with key events and information.

You could also use this to share promotions on specific treatments such as teeth whitening, straightening, dental implants or your other highest value services.

It's often a good idea to promote time-sensitive offers for a limited time only to encourage engagement.

3. Share health advice on a dental waiting room TV

Rather than sharing all of your important hygiene tips via pamphlets, use your dental TV screens to reinforce important advice and educate patients. By rotating key health messages, you can help patients to learn more about good dental habits while they wait to be treated.

You might also share educational videos on the best practices for brushing your teeth, flossing or other recommended behaviors to avoid gum disease. According to surveys, 75% of those viewing a digital sign in a healthcare centre recall at least one message. Being able to read and enjoy messages can also cut perceived wait time by up to 35%.

Custom content can easily be created and shared in Google Slides app, Noticeboard or uploaded direct as an image or video file through your Wifi network.

4. Social media feedback and user generated content

A good dentist can be hard to find, which is why people tend to scour online reviews and social media feedback for reassurance before booking an appointment.

You can strengthen patient peace of mind even further by promoting your social media feeds in your dental practice. This helps show off social proof, customer feedback and all of the great content you’re already creating for your online audience. This could be anything from your surgery’s Twitter feed, to Facebook recommendations, an Instagram gallery or a Foursquare review.

5. Dynamic content

As well as sharing information about your practice on your dental waiting room TV, you could also break this up with dynamic content in the form of live news feeds, YouTube video content, or other forms of streaming or live video content – all of which can be tailored to certain demographics in order to engage patients and make them feel more at home.

You can also use digital signage screens to play music playlists via Spotify or Vimeo.

According to studies, patients who listen to music before a dental treatment have fewer stress hormones than those who take medication to calm their nerves.

In paediatric surgery, where your patients are a little younger, children have also been found to prefer having TV screens to watch and music to listen to while in the waiting room.

Beyond the waiting room

Digital signage goes beyond simple usage as waiting room entertainment. Like many businesses, dentists can leverage the power of digital displays in other ways such as:

• Window displays
• Self check-in kiosks
• Room signage displays/wayfinding signage

With a network of multiple digital screens in a dental practice, you can segment your signage by zone or area.

For example, you could promote your latest offers for teeth whitening or corrective treatments in your window display.

You could then have a welcome display with touchscreen check-in at the reception, to enable people to skip the queue. And, with your waiting room TV, you could call people to specific treatment rooms, and signpost those rooms with tablet style signage displays.

Using ScreenCloud as dental waiting room TV

Digital signage offers many benefits to businesses, from improved communication to better engagement with everything from your special offers to your social media.

ScreenCloud makes digital signage simple. By integrating easily with consumer grade hardware, with no technical knowledge required, dental practices and healthcare facilities can quickly and efficiently start displaying information on professional digital displays.

And because ScreenCloud also includes app integrations and free display templates as standard, you don't even need design skills to create great content. Simply pick your template, edit and upload, and away you go.

Content can also be updated remotely, scheduled in advance and edited easily. What's more, with ScreenCloud, you can give user permissions to different members of your team, making it even easier to manage your digital signage displays.

Discover how ScreenCloud's market leading digital signage software can support your organization by signing up for a free trial, or simply request a demo to find out more