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A visiting doctor is a staff entry your clinic uses to book and assign appointments to a clinician who is not a permanent member of your team — a specialist who covers two days a week, a locum doctor, or a partner from another practice who sees patients at your clinic occasionally. You capture their name and contact details so reception can find them, slot patients onto their calendar, and reach them on the phone, but you never give them a login or an invitation email.

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When to use a visiting doctor instead of inviting staff

SituationUse
The doctor will work the same hours every week and needs to log in to see their schedule and clinical notesInvite Staff (regular doctor account)
The doctor only covers occasional appointments and you just need a name to attach bookings toAdd Visiting Doctor
You want the doctor to receive WhatsApp reminders, sign clinical notes, or write prescriptionsInvite Staff
The doctor is a colleague from a partner clinic who treats a few of your patients per monthAdd Visiting Doctor
A visiting doctor cannot sign in to the portal, cannot receive in-app notifications, and is not counted against your doctor seat license. They exist purely so that reception can pick them in the appointment doctor selector, see them in calendar filters, and reassign appointments to them when a walk-in specialist arrives.

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Who can add a visiting doctor

By default, both admin and receptionist roles can add visiting doctors. This matches the front-desk workflow — reception is usually the first to know that a visiting specialist has arrived for the day. The permission key is staff.create.visiting. If you want to restrict it to admins only, open Settings → Staff → permission dialog for the receptionist member and toggle it off.

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How to add a visiting doctor

  1. Open Settings → Staff.
  2. Click Add Visiting Doctor in the action row at the top.
  3. Fill in the modal:
    • First name and Last name (required) — what reception will see in the doctor picker.
    • Email (required) — used as a unique identifier inside OdontoX. No email is sent to this address.
    • Phone (optional) — reception can quickly contact the visiting doctor from the staff list.
    • Specialty (optional) — e.g. Orthodontics, Endodontics. Shown next to the name in the staff list.
  4. Click Add Visiting Doctor. The doctor appears in the staff list with a small Visiting badge and is immediately selectable everywhere appointments are booked.

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Where visiting doctors show up

  • Doctor picker on appointments. Both when creating a new appointment and when reassigning an unassigned one — visiting doctors appear in the same dropdown as login doctors, with a small “Visiting” pill next to the name.
  • Calendar lanes. A visiting doctor with appointments on a given day gets their own column in the day-view calendar, exactly like a login doctor.
  • Staff list. Visible under Settings → Staff with the “Visiting” badge. You can also filter to a dedicated Visiting Doctors tab on the same page if you only want to see this list.
  • Weekly availability editor. Open the Weekly Availability dropdown on a visiting doctor’s row to set the days and hours they work at your clinic. The hours are respected when reception books appointments — bookings outside those hours are rejected the same as for any other doctor.

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What visiting doctors do NOT have access to

  • They cannot sign in. Attempting to sign in with their email returns the standard “invalid credentials” response.
  • They do not receive any invitation email or password setup link.
  • They do not appear in WhatsApp reminder targeting, EOD email recipients, or any other staff-notification channel.
  • They do not occupy a paid doctor seat against your subscription.

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Convert a visiting doctor to a regular staff account later

If a visiting doctor becomes a permanent member of your team and needs login access, send them a normal invite via Invite Staff using the same email address. The system detects the existing visiting-doctor row, links it to the new login account, and the historical appointments they were assigned to remain attached to the same identity.

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Need help?

If anything is unclear, write to [email protected] or open a ticket from Settings → Support.