Diskretionskarte

Diskretionskarte is a small card or a discreet sign kept on the counter, usually carrying a short line such as a request to speak somewhere quieter. A customer who does not want to explain themselves in front of a queue points at it, and the member of staff behind the counter takes the conversation somewhere else. That is the whole mechanism, and it works because the customer no longer has to say out loud what the matter is about.

Placement decides whether it is used at all:

• The card belongs where the person is already standing and looking.
• Flat on the counter or in a small holder at the point of handover works, while a pillar behind the customer or a leaflet rack does not.
• One card per serving position is better than one card for the whole pharmacy.
• The same line at the entrance tells a nervous customer the option exists before they queue.

A pharmacy that offers health services benefits from a card more than a purely dispensing pharmacy does. As soon as a measurement, a sample or a test is part of the service, customers arrive with questions they would rather not ask in the room. Some of them will otherwise leave the pharmacy without asking anything. The card also gives staff a defined moment, because the request is unambiguous and nobody has to judge whether the customer wanted privacy.

It should be described honestly, because there is no rule requiring a Diskretionskarte and no supervisory authority asks to see one. What is required is the possibility of confidential advice, which is the question behind the Beratungsraum. The card is only the signal, so the pharmacy needs somewhere for the conversation to actually happen, whether that is a screened corner, a separate room or a step away from the counter. A pharmacy that offers privacy and then answers at the till has made things worse rather than better.

Two things make the card real:

1. The Standardarbeitsanweisung says what happens when the card is used, who covers the counter and where the conversation goes, so the response does not depend on which member of staff is on shift.
2. The step away from the counter is what makes Vertraulichkeit der Kundendaten workable, because a value read out at the till has already stopped being confidential.

The conversation keeps its own requirements, since a longer discussion about a measurement or a sample still needs Aufklärung und Einwilligung before anything is done. A service offered as an apothekenübliche Dienstleistung is judged on that conversation.