Clinic Rules of Conduct

Incorporating security, health and safety

Here below are a few basic rules that every practitioner should follow when working at Salus Wellness Clinics (updated on 8 December 2022).

Business cards

You will see in reception that we have business card racks for you to advertise your businesses. These are great as clients waiting in reception will always look at what other therapies are being offered. Please could you ensure that you check regularly to see whether you need to refresh your supplies so that you never run out.

Handling referrals

We pass referrals to the most suitable practitioner to handle each enquiry.  When in doubt or when we believe more than one practitioner can handle an enquiry we are sending  an anonymised enquiry to all suitable practitioners until we can match the referral to the right practitioner. We expect you to contact the referred person as soon as possible and let us know whether it was converted into a client or, for any reason, it wasn’t.  These information are important to us to be sure that a person in need has not been left waiting for days. Needless to say we expect all clients referred by us or from practitioners at Salus Wellness to be seen at our clinic.  If you need to refer a client to another practitioner feel free to pass it on to us and we can handle the referring process or, if you prefer, contact directly any practitioner at Salus Wellness in order to refer clients to them.

Time slots

Unless differently agreed in writing, each practitioner should work within the time allocated for their hours, slots or days.  All practitioners should ensure to use their room within their allocated day(s) of the week and slot(s) and leave the room ready to use by the last minute of their allocated time. Exceptions can be arranged in writing with the management team and the eventual other practitioners which would normally be using the same room at the same time.

Ad-hoc hours booking and cancellations

All ad-hoc hours must be booked into the booking app (currently mindbodyonline.com and the “mindbody business” phone app) before being used, respecting adequate time gaps, 15 minutes for talking therapy rooms and 30 minutes for physical therapy rooms, to allow for a smooth changeover between practitioners. Back to back bookings create unnecessary tension and the Office team often get a good part of the complaint.  As we have the best intentions to help every practitioner working at Salus Wellness we’ll be adjusting bookings either in time or location or, in extreme cases, cancelling them when they are not fitting within the requested parameters.

Cancellations for ad-hoc hours must be submitted by Email to the address bookings@salus-wellness.com giving no less than 24 hours notice. Failing to cancel a booking within the expected minimum notice mentioned above will incur the booking being charged at full price. Special circumstances, such as personal accidents and justifiable medical reasons for not cancelling with the minimum notice will be considered in exceptional situations, from time to time.

Extending your booking in real time

If you know you will not end your session on time (due to your client being late or your session lasting longer), please ensure that you book an additional 30 or 60 minutes slot on Mindbodyonline.com. That is obviously just if there is enough space before the next booking (!)

Use of rooms

All practitioners have a preferred room that is allocated for them or a room that is booked for them on an ad-hoc basis: there may be exceptional situations when they need to use a different room. In general the clinic will be as accommodating as possible toward reasonable and justified change of room, subject to availability and given adequate notice.

It is expected the same level of flexibility from practitioners in those situations when another colleague may need to use a room and, for example, they are not planning to use it. We are sorry to have to do this but we only do it on the odd occasion when it is unavoidable and if it ensures things work a little more efficiently. If you’d like the guarantee of the use of one room only, then please do ask about the possibility of booking a slot.

Layout and state of rooms

Each room has a set of furniture laid out in a specific way; practitioners are free and authorised to change the layout of the room they are using to best fit their specific needs. At the end of their booking practitioners should rearrange the room to its original layout.  Before leaving the room for the next practitioner they should:

  • collect/wipe off any spillage of water, oil or other products they use for their practice
  • bring back to the kitchen used glasses/cups/plates etc and wash them up
  • turn the radiators to 0 / off
  • ensure electric heaters and fans are unplugged
  • collect eventual rubbish off the floors
  • ensure no hazardous materials (i.e. acupuncture needles) are dropped and left on the floors or other surfaces
  • ensure no taps are left running in the rooms which have sinks

Each room is allocated with one heater / lamp (and fan in the summer) so please do not remove any of these from other therapy rooms thereby denying others from using devices which are within their rights. If that room is busy then please leave the items nearby and let us know so we can try to fix the situation when possible.

Please make sure you make best use of the radiators in your room before resorting to using the electric heaters.  We understand that for physical therapies it may be necessary to use the electric heaters as well as the radiators, so that partially undressed clients don’t feel cold before, during and after receiving their treatments. On the other hand please try to keep talking therapy rooms within health and safety guidelines of 18 to 21 degrees which can be easily achieved with the existing radiators.

The radiators in common areas like reception, corridors and kitchen are set to keep a mild and constant temperature. Please refrain from adjusting them to your personal taste as you walk past them.

Every room should have a box of tissues available for yourself and your clients. We try to check their availability on a daily basis but they can indeed run out.  If that’s the case please note we keep a stock of them in the cabinet under the sink in the kitchen and you can pick one up from there.  Please help us by making sure you finish a box before you open the next one.

Invoicing and ad-hoc inaccuracies

Invoices are sent out on the first working day of each month.  If by any chance you don’t receive an invoice (and you know you should, e.g. you used ad-hoc hours the previous month) please ask for it.  It might well be the case it was sent to you but the email was not delivered correctly.

If you notice any mistakes (on your invoices) regarding the calculation of your ad-hoc hours, you can run a report  called “schedule at a glance” from mindbodyonline.com to check your hours. If the results are still incorrect, please email us as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we will not be able to process or amend invoices if we communication on this matter is received later than 5 working days after the invoice is sent.

PLEASE NOTE: When paying your invoice please can you put your full name as the payment reference so that it can be identified more easily. Thank you.

Reception and accessing the clinic

The reception will normally open Monday to Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm (with the exception of bank holidays and Christmas closing times which are notified via practitioners communications).  All practitioners are supplied with their own key fob and passcode in order to enter the building.  When you are the last person leaving the building you should ensure to switch off all lights, check that all windows are shut and close the door firmly behind you.

Whoever opens the clinic should:

  • enter the clinic using the key fob or passcode.
  • switch on the light in the reception area and landing above.
  • hang their plaque on the allocation board. The plaques are kept downstairs on the right hand side of the wall near the room named Amethyst.
  • go to their room, hang up the plaque on the door and set-up the room

Whoever leaves last should lock the clinic therefore he/she should:

  • tidy up the room, remove the plaque from the door and go to reception
  • remove their plaque from the allocation board
  • switch off all lights
  • close the front door

Parking at the Clinic

There are 3 parking places allocated to the front of the building. However, the parking is for Staff Only and not for clients coming to the Clinic. Please ensure you inform all your clients that parking is not permitted at the Clinic and that there is metered parking available along the roads off Hill’s Road. Parking are available to hire just by practitioners who are renting rooms by the slot or day and subject to availability. Any practitioners wishing to use a parking space will need to seek permission from the management team, in writing, before doing so.

Kitchen area

The kitchen is provided as it is with sink, tea and coffee making facilities and a fridge to store food or drinks while at the clinic.  Feel free to use any tea / coffee / milk you find in the kitchen as it’s provided by us for free for you. If you put in the fridge items for your personal use please mark them with your name to ensure nobody is going to use them by mistake. Please make sure to remove your own items from the fridge as unrecognised food or drinks might be removed or disposed if seen in the fridge for long periods of time and after their “best by” date.  The sink and the sides should be left clean and tidy: if you use cups or glasses you should wash them up immediately after their use. Please do not leave unwashed items in the sink, even with the best intentions of washing them up later, as they will be in the way of other people needing the sink.  As the kitchen is immediately adjacent to one therapy room (Peridot) please make sure to keep noise to a minimum while there, and on the landing outside, and avoid chatting or making other noises while preparing your food and drinks. We have a Brita watering filtering jug; there are also two bottles of filtered water in the fridge.  This way you have the opportunity of drinking water from the tap or filtered at room temperature from the Brita jug and cold from the fridge.  Please refill the jug and/or the bottles after use so the next person using them always finds fresh water available. Please ensure no taps are left running after you have washed up.

Accessibility at Norman House

A mobile ramp is available to access the building from the front door. The whole ground floor is then accessible to people on wheelchairs and on mobility scooters. There is no accessible access to the toilets which are located upstairs.  Please contact us to receive the necessary training about safely using the ramp, when you are welcoming a client with limited mobility.

Expected client behaviour when visiting the clinic

During reception opening times the management and/or reception staff will welcome all visitors and invite them to wait for their practitioner to pick them up at the right time.  However the reception might be temporary closed for short periods of time during lunch breaks and for various other reasons.  It is the responsibility of each practitioner to ensure that all clients are aware that reception might be closed, even more so for appointments in the evenings or at weekends and bank holidays.  Clients should be informed to enter reception, have a seat and wait for their practitioner.  Also they should be picked up, on time, from reception and walked back to reception at the end of each appointment; under no circumstances should a client be walking around the clinic unaccompanied. Reception staff will usually welcome clients when they arrive but will not notify practitioners of their arrival.  All clients should have direct contact with their practitioner and notify them (rather than the clinic) about being delayed or when they arrive at Reception.

Name plaques

All practitioners have a pair of plaques with their name and specialisation on them.  If, for any reason the practitioner’s own plaque are not available there are two pairs of generic plaques with “Room in Use” written on them.  It is essential to remember to systematically hang one plaque to the “Room Allocation Board” in the Reception area and the other on the door where you are working.  A door without a plaque identifies a free room and all clinic staff will assume this to be the case and freely walk into free rooms.  At the end of the allocated slot the practitioner must remove both plaques and put them back in the rack in Reception to the right of Amethyst which you will see as you enter the reception area.  Ensuring that the plaques are used in the way described above is also an essential requirement in case of emergency when it may be necessary to vacate the building in a rush when, a simple check at the Room Allocation Board, will enable the management / reception staff / fire wardens to know whether anybody is left in the building.

Please ensure you don’t accidentally remove the room name plaque off the door to the therapy room being used.

Quiet place

Many of the disciplines practiced in the clinic rely on a quiet environment where the client can concentrate on the voice of the practitioner without disturbance and distractions.  Everybody is encouraged to speak quietly, or not at all, while entering and exiting the clinic as well as in the reception, kitchen, aisles, stairs and upstairs landing..  Attention should also be paid to doors in order to avoid slamming them shut.

Leave the plants alone (please)

Please refrain from watering the plants in the clinic.  The various plants in our clinic have very different needs in terms of water, of which we are fully aware.  For that reason we arrange watering them at the right time and with the right amount of water. Unfortunately we often find some of the plants with too much water which could kill them.

Use of storage spaces in the clinic

Please be aware there is a communal storage space within the clinic so please ask us and we will give your further information.

Safety in the clinic

Please be aware of the following:

    • incidents: In case an incident of any kind occurs it should be reported (a.s.a.p. and however within 24 hours) to reception by:
      • Speaking to a member of the management team during reception time
      • Emailing or calling the management team
    • sharps waste buckets: these yellow buckets with orange lid are used by acupuncturists to dispose safely their needles after use.These have a safety mechanism to lock them when they are full and cannot be opened afterwards; pleas refrain from locking them and leave them on the floor where the chance of falling and spilling their content is minimum.
    • broken or damaged items: Please can you report any breakages so that we are aware and can remove the items safely.
    • toilets: there are 3 toilets situated upstairs. One for female clients and the other for male clients. The toilet at the end of the corridor is for staff only.

Procedures for the clinic and their evolution

As a community of over 70 people happily working within the same space we need to set a number of rules and procedures which ensures the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for the whole clinic to work at its best.  It happens some times that practitioners, particularly new ones or coming from other organisations, question the way we work or suggest alternative ways of doing things.  While we are happy to hear constructive criticism and suggestions about how the clinic can operate better we would like to stress that most of our procedures are not simply the first idea which came to someone’s mind but the result of a number of trial and error and, often, a number of carefully selected refinements to an initial draft.

Fines for charity

Since 1st March 2018, the following fines, due to security breaches and other instructions not being adhered to, were introduced to be paid to the charity which we support from time to time:

  • £5 for lights or heating left on after leaving the room
  • £10 for “back to back bookings”. This has caused problems if not enough time is given to the next practitioner using the room. Please allow 15 mins for talk therapies and 30 min for physical therapies.
  • £10 for being in a room without plaques on the door and/or the room allocation board (per each plaque)
  • £20 if plaques are left on the door and/or the room allocation board after leaving the clinic (per each plaque)
  • £20 for using a room inappropriately, e.g. using a room which you have not booked

Please note that we had no choice but to introduce these fines; we actually feel it’s a win-win situation as we receive lots of gratitude from the charities we are supporting.