A standard appointment session is the 'normal' session a practitioner is available to take appointments, as opposed to 'special' sessions, or days where the practitioner is normally absent.

Standard sessions can further be divided into two groups;

• 'Default' sessions - the default for the entire Appointment Book. Default sessions always override practitioner-specific sessions.

• 'Practitioner-specific' sessions - these are the sessions that each practitioner will be available to take appointments. Practitioner-specific sessions will always be overridden by 'default' sessions.

 

The setting up of both of these session types is explained below.

To setup Standard Sessions:

1.      Open the Appointment module by either;

o      Clicking

o      Selecting Waiting Room > Appointment Book.

 

2.      If you have multiple Appointment Books in use, select the Appointment Book you wish to use via the associated drop-down list.

3.      Select Setup > Availability > Standard Sessions. The Session Details window appears.

 

4.      From the Practitioner drop-down list select either;

o      Default Sessions, to create sessions for the entire selected Appointment Book. Note that default standard sessions override all practitioner-specific standard sessions. Therefore if you intend to create practitioner-specific standard sessions for even a single practitioner, there must be nothing recorded under 'default' sessions - all default session times must be left blank.

o      Practitioner-specific Sessions, to create a session plan for each practitioner. This approach requires you select each practitioner, in turn, and record their session plan. Even if only one of your practitioners has a different session plan to the others, a plan must be recorded for every practitioner. See the example scenario below.

 

5.      Select a day of the week to define sessions for, via the associated drop-down list. You must define sessions plans for each day, in turn, as described in Step 8, following. For now though, select only the first day.

6.      Enter starting times and finishing times for each session via the associated text boxes. You can use the > buttons to shift forward and backward in half-hour increments.

7.      (Optional) Tick the Other Location check box to indicate that for a given session, appointments will be consulted at a site other than the normal Practice. This option can be used to show when a practitioner is available to conduct home visits, for example. Sessions flagged in this way appear in the Appointment Book in a different colour.

8.      When you have completed your session times for the selected day, click Save to confirm your settings. You must now complete Steps 4 through 8 again, for each day that the practice/practitioner is available to take appointments.

9.      Click to close the Sessions Details window.

Example

Your practice has 6 practitioners.

Your practice runs two default standard sessions per day - 9:00 to 12:00 and 12:30 to 4:00.

In the Session Details window for your Appointment Book, you have recorded these Default Sessions for each day. As you have setup default standard sessions, there is no need to setup practitioner-specific standard sessions - each practitioner follows the default standard plan.

A new practitioner then joins the practice. Unlike the other practitioners however, she is only available until 3:00 each day.

To record her practitioner-specific session plan, you must do two things:

1.      Delete all of the default standard session plans, for each day.

2.      Record practitioner-specific standard session plans for each day, for the new practitioner, and all the other practitioners.