Week 8 Field session: The waiting room audit

Auditing one waiting space against the seven propositions, and separating the service from the anaesthetic.

28 April 2027

This is the only session that involves actually talking to the people who are waiting. It is harder than it sounds, most people find the first approach uncomfortable, and it tends to change what students write for the rest of the semester.

What happens#

Twenty minutes. The audit sheet, one row per proposition, and the classification you apply to everything you find. Does this intervention make the wait shorter, or does it make the wait feel shorter, or does it make the wait worse while looking like help. All three are common.

Seventy minutes, in the field. Pairs go to a waiting space. Not a moving queue this time, a room where people sit. A clinic reception, a service centre, a repair desk, the campus health centre. You audit the space, then you ask.

Then you ask three questions of anybody who agrees to answer them.

1. How long do you think you have been waiting.
2. How long do you think you have left.
3. What would make this better.

The gap between answer one and the actual time is the finding. It is reliably large and it is not symmetric.

Consent, properly#

Say who you are and what the questions are for before you ask anything. Accept a no immediately and do not ask twice. Do not approach anybody who looks distressed, do not ask anybody waiting for a result, do not record names, and do not go anywhere staff have not agreed to. Priya has the site list and has already asked.

Thirty minutes, back in the room. The estimates against the clock.

Bring#

• Audit sheet, printed, one per person. Provided if you forget.
• A watch.
• A partner you can work quietly with.

What leaves the room#

A completed audit of one waiting space, at least three sets of answers, and each intervention you found classified as shortening, softening or masking.