Page 19 - HME Business, March/April 2022

Incontinence
order to develop a complete solution for each of their patients.
OFFER DISCRETION, PRIVACY AND DIGNITY
Once incontinence clients are in your showroom, you need to ensure that you have the right “infrastructure” to properly care for them. Remember that many incontinence sufferers feel em- barrassed and even stigmatized by their situation, so you want to provide service that can properly respond to that.
Also, dedicate a completely enclosed, private are with toilet and washbasin that can let them not only discuss solutions, but also try them.
That discretion doesn’t just extend to consultation. If you ship or deliver incontinence items, consider packaging them in anonymous wrappings or boxes.
If patients come to purchasing items from your store, consid- er providing a private way they can pick up larger incontinence items, such as packages of diapers, in a discrete, careful fash- ion. A simply way to offer this is by providing over-the-phone or online orders and then allowing curb-side or backdoor pickup in back of the store.
FORM A TEAM OF RESPECTFUL PROS
Ensure that the staff members that will be working with those patients are educated when it comes to incontinence, and have a “bedside manner” that combines professionalism, maturity, respect and discretion, so that patients feel free to discuss their condition.
You must dedicate well-trained, professional staff mem- bers to the task of working with incontinence patients. It’s very difficult for patients to share all this private information with a recent high school grad, for example.
Dedicating knowledgeable staff to the task might also give the patient treatment ideas to discuss with his or her physician. So, the team members that a pharmacy dedicates to working with incontinence patients should also have some kind of train- ing in the normal urinary tract and bowel function, and what an abnormal one is.
In terms of specific training, start by looking at what your state HME association, pharmaceutical society or other trade associations might have to offer in the way of seminars address- ing incontinence. Or you could have a registered nurse come in and site down with the staff to review basic concepts and treat- ment steps for incontinence.
WORK WITH CAREGIVERS
When a client comes into your store seeking incontinence solu- tions, there is a good possibility that person might not be the patient. At times, you will deal with family members, spouses, significant others, caregivers and other people who are working as a proxy for a patient.
This is understandable, but it does create some degree of difficulty, because the go-between is not going to be able to answer questions with the same level of specificity that a
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