Basic equipment every doctor needs
- Written by News Company
Every year there are thousands of young doctors who graduate from medical school and get ready to go into fulltime work as a doctor. For these young professionals, the options are many – they could opt to specialise further, or they might look to get a gig at a clinic or state hospital. Others will look to set up their own practice and go into business for themselves. For many general practitioners, this is the dream, often returning to the town or community where they grew up. But setting up a practice can be an expensive and often daunting process – there are certainly some significant capital outlays requires if it is a case of setting up a practice from scratch. If this is the case for you, here are a few essentials that you will need to kit out your rooms.
Blood pressure
Taking a history and doing a basic examination are the cornerstones of any visit to the doctor. And one of the most important elements of that physical is the monitoring of the blood pressure. High blood pressure or hypertension can be very dangerous if not treated and so all doctors will need an Omron blood pressure monitor in their rooms as part of the basic workup.
The heart
If you don’t set yourself up with an automatic blood pressure reader then you will need to do it the old-fashioned way, and this naturally requires a stethoscope. This is probably the one piece of equipment that a doctor cannot do without. It goes without saying that it is not just used to help take a blood pressure reading, a stethoscope is also used to listen to the heart and the lungs and to make sure that there are no tell-tale signs of problems – murmurs, tachycardia, pleurisy, etc.
Knee reflex
One of the quirkier tests that doctors do is the knee jerk reflex. This requires a patella hammer and it is another instrument that is a staple of most properly kitted out doctor’s rooms. The hammer is part of the process for diagnosing problems with the nervous system and it is a test that is frequently carried out by GPs examining a patient for the first time.
Eye testing
The ophthalmoscope is another indispensable piece of equipment. It is the finny looking device that is used to look into a patient’s eyes. This instrument shines a light into the eye and allows the doctor to look at what is going on behind the pupil. It is an expensive piece of equipment but once again, it is something that is used in almost every basic health check. A doctor without an ophthalmoscope is like a butcher without a cleaver!
Hospital bed
You can’t have a practice room without a bed. We are not talking about a place for a patient to sleep or lie after being admitted to hospital, rather this is a bed for them to sit on while being examined. It is a basic essential, and unless you are setting up as a psychiatrist or an anaesthetist you will almost certainly need it – you certainly will need it as a GP.