How cable news negatively affects patient experience

Editorial Team
no cable news in the waiting room
The old adage goes…No news, is good news.

It’s safe to say that the patients that are sitting in your waiting area are already experiencing some degree of stress and anxiety.  If their appointment is a regular checkup, there’s always the stress of finding something wrong. If their appointment is to have a cosmetic or elective procedure, it most likely involves some degree of discomfort and is producing anxiety. If the reason for their appointment is due to sickness, that stress is even more heightened. Also, some people become stressed and anxious at just the sight of a person in a lab coat (White Coat Syndrome). So, you, as a healthcare provider, should be providing a stress-free waiting area, or at the very least, an area that doesn’t contribute negatively to a patient’s stress level.

Especially in today’s highly charged news atmosphere, where even the news channel (CNN, FOX, ABC) that you have selected can be offensive and taint the patient experience from the moment they step foot in your office, it is in your best interest to steer clear of all polarizing programing. 

If you need some scientific evidence to support this, an article published in PubMed.gov, entitled “Negative psychological effects of watching the news on television: relaxation or another intervention may be needed to buffer them!”, researchers demonstrated that watching the news on television triggers persisting negative psychological feelings that could not be buffered by attention-diverting distraction, but only by a directed psychological intervention such as progressive relaxation. Oh my! Needless to say, it’s important to consider the full patient experience.

To put the entire article in a quick sound bite, “If you are broadcasting The News to your waiting area, you are negatively impacting the psychological health of your patients!”

Instead, of creating an atmosphere of fear, insecurity and dis-ease, why not use your TV to deliver important information that will improve your patients’ health and positively impact their overall impression of your organization and their experience at your clinic. Mediplay is your answer and it costs less than your stress-inducing cable news stations!

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