What's the context?
There may be situations where clinicians are busy with meetings outside of appointments during their normal working schedule. To provide visibility of these other scheduled activities, you can create meetings and add clinicians, and non-medical staff as attendees.
This helps to:
- Plan activities
- Reduces the chance of double booking a clinician's diary
- Provide clear visibility of commitments for clinicians.
What is the purpose of the article?
This article outlines:
- How meetings can be booked via a Calendar or Room
- The characteristics and features of booked meetings
- Different ‘What if’ scenario questions for meetings and provides suggested answers
How do you book a meeting via the Calendar?
The process for booking a meeting via the Calendar is explained step-by-step in the article ‘Booking & managing online meetings’. Although in that context the meeting is ‘online’, the booking steps are very similar.
To complement that explanation, the short video below provides a demonstration of what you can do to book a meeting using the Calendar.
How do you book a meeting via a Room?
To do this:
1. From the Start page, select the Room tile
2. Then select Meeting
3. In the Book Meeting page showing the location/room schedules, select the required Site from the drop-down at the top of the screen
4. Navigate through the Calendar in the top right and choose the required day
5. In the required Location (i.e. the Room) click on a Start time slot
6. Now you can:
a. Add attendees
b. Send an invitation email
c. Make the meeting an online video (Must have telemedicine integration)
d. Make the Meeting Recurring
e. Update the Length of the meeting and Start Time
f. Change the Site or Location of the meeting
g. * Set the type of meeting. * This is a feature not enabled by default. If you would like this, please reach out to our support team.
h. Set a Subject for the meeting
i. Add Notes for the meeting
j. Change the date of the meeting.
8. Finally you can Save the meeting via the button in the top-left of the screen.
The meeting is created, added to the diary for each attendee. It will also appear in the schedule when booking further meetings.
Modifying Meetings
Often, meetings need to be rescheduled or cancelled. For recurring meetings, it is important to be able to modify instances or delete future meetings. This is easily managed from within the meeting page.
Please note: To be able to modify or delete a meeting from a clinician's diary, you will need to be an admin of the meeting. By default, the only admin is the person that has created the meeting. This default can be changed in Admin > Config > Appointments.
Modifying a meeting instance
- Click on the meeting slot on a clinician's diary, or from the book meeting page or from the side-by-side scheduler.
- To modify an instance, find the meeting date and time in the left panel and select the pencil Icon to make changes to the meeting.
- To delete an instance, find the meeting date and time in the left panel and select the bin icon to delete that meeting.
Deleting meetings on mass
To cancel/delete meetings on mass,
- Click Meeting > Show All on the top tool bar
- Enter specified date range of meetings
- Select meetings to be cancelled
- Click Cancel Selected Meetings button on the bottom right corner
- Confirm cancellation of selected meetings
What are the characteristics of a booked meeting?
When viewing a booked meeting you can see:
- Attendees
- Schedule
- Location
- Related documents and comments
You can also
- Invite further attendees
- Assign tasks in relation to the meeting
- Add documents
- Cancel the meeting
Further information about these features are set out in the article ‘booking and managing online meetings’.
What if…?
In the context of meetings and diary availability, there are a few ‘what ifs’ you may have. We address some common ones in the sub-sections below.
You are attending a meeting but there is no location specified
In this situation, viewing the schedule for a Room won’t help you find anything out about the meeting. Alternatively, you can find some detail from your calendar as follows:
1. Go to the Calendar from the start page of the Meddbase application
2. Navigate to the appropriate date for the meeting via the monthly calendar in the top-left
The meeting will be displayed as a booked slot in the Calendar. To continue to view the detail for the meeting
3. Click on the meeting
By doing so, you can see information about meeting attendees, documents or comments added to the feed. The video below provides a short walk-through of how to do this.
You want to find out whether a clinician is free for a meeting at a specific date and time
If you are looking to check this before making a booking you can do as follows:
1. From the Start page go to Clinician
2. Find the clinician
3. In the Actions panel, click on Diary
4. Navigate to the correct day using the Calendar
You are then presented with a list of their scheduled availability and booked slots.
You want to check the availability of rooms/locations for a meeting and avoid clashes
It is possible to check room/location availability before you start to book a meeting. To do this:
1. From the Start page go to Room
2. Select the Meeting tile
3. Choose the correct site from the drop-down list
4. Navigate to the appropriate day in the Calendar
You are then presented with a side-by-side schedule for that day of rooms registered on your system. Any appointments and meetings recorded as using these room are displayed. Also their allocation to clinicians is shown too.
You want to show a commitment in your diary (to prevent double-booking)
If you are committed during a time in your schedule, for example attending an external meeting or an online CPD session, you can book a meeting to show that it is being used. To do this:
1. Go to the Calendar
2. Navigate to the appropriate date via the monthly calendar in the top-left
3. Click in the time slot on the day that denotes the time you wish to block out
4. Complete the booking of the meeting
This will then mean that the time is shown as booked in your diary.
If a Meddbase user then tries to book an appointment at that time via the Clinician Schedule/Side-by-Side Scheduler, it will present a double-booking warning.
That said, you may prefer to adjust the Clinician's availability for Scheduling via the Site Scheduler so that the blocked-out time is not included in the scheduled time shown as being available for appointments.
You want to change the colour coding for meetings
You can change the background colour for meetings in the diary. This can help make them stand out from appointments. To do this:
1. Go to Admin from the Start page
2. Select Configuration
3. Go to Schedule and Day Sheet
4. Find the setting for ‘Meeting Schedule Item Colour’
5. Select the required colour from Meeting schedule item colour
6. Save the change
By doing so, when
- Viewing a Diary
- Viewing Side by Side Schedules
- Booking a meeting
This background colour is then displayed for meetings.
Review date
This article was last updated on 5th December 2024