Can each room be fitted with a volume or on/off switch?

While many patients will enjoy the soft, soothing sounds of Yanni, others may get nauseous or angry. It’s a nice touch to be able to turn off the music in each area of the clinic

separately. Second to this is to have a volume control in or for each room. Maybe that guy really likes Yanni and would like it a little louder while he cooks.

3. Does your service have music without words? This is a difficult issue. While nobody truly likes elevator music, sometimes the words to a song can be distracting. You should also ask if the service provides natural sounds, such as rainfall or white noise (very popular), or classical music from the Orient. Be careful with the Chinese plunking music, however. You don’t want to paint yourself into a stereotyped corner (more on this later).

At our clinic, [ES] we purchase CDs of current music that is acceptable to the masses and pick songs from each one to mix onto a CD for clinic use. This is not illegal as we are not selling the music, nor did we acquire it without cost. We maintain all of the CDs in the basement of our clinic. All together, we now have 20 different clinic mix CDs that we change daily in a five disk CD-changer. Each morning, we just set the player to

‘random’ and away the day goes.

Aromas

Other than the ubiquitous smell of moxibustion, which may be controlled to some extent by air filtration, there are other smells that often pervade an Oriental medicine clinic that you may not be able to control. For example, if you treat a lot of pain

patients, such things as ointments and liniments have definite

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aromas, and, if you have a bulk pharmacy, the smells of the herbs will also permeate the air. Many patients will like all these smells, but some may find any or all of the smells worrisome due to them being unusual. Also, allergy patients may have a real problem with either moxa or bulk herb dust. If you decide to do air filtration, Consumer Reports Online rates air filters.

The highest rated that we have heard of include the Freiderich C-90A, the Holmes HAP675, and the Whirlpool AP45030HO.

These will cost you between $200-500 but can keep your air both sweeter smelling and healthier if you are making either dust or smoke. You might also consider some aromatherapy in the way of oils, candles, plug-ins, or even cut flowers in season to give your clinic the olfactory flavor that suits you and will make your patients comfortable.

On the Walls

Treatment rooms are a great place to hang acupuncture charts.

Channels, points, auricular, and dermatome-man are all very good ‘wall coverings’ as well as educational pieces. If you specialize in working with children, perhaps a few Harry Potter or Sponge Bob pictures would be a nice touch. If you treat athletes, then frame and hang your autograph from Michael Jordan or put inspirational (framed) posters on the wall.

Whomever your audience, try to speak to them through the types of images you place in each treatment room. A fun decorating idea is to have a different theme in each room.

Outdoors, adventure, medical, or kids things. Your patients will appreciate the effort and you will appreciate the escape from monotony.

A Place to Sit

Each room should include two chairs if there is room: one for you, the practitioner, and one for the patient. In the

honeymoon stage of the relationship with a new patient, many times they feel more comfortable sitting in a chair and

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discussing their chief complaint and life’s history, rather than sitting on your treatment table. Providing a second chair is also nice when the patient brings a friend or relative and to avoid any issues of sexual misconduct with new female patients. For example, if you happen to have a younger female who comes in after hours and your receptionist has gone home, ask the parent to join you in the treatment room. Mom can sit and read her People comfortably while you work on her daughter,

comfortable in your skin.

To Write and to Store

A desk or small cupboard with a writing surface is another handy item for your treatment room. A cupboard may do double duty here because it allows you to keep a day’s worth of sheets, fresh towels, and treatment gowns dust-free and out of sight and gives you a writing surface at the same time. This is far better than having clean laundry items stacked up on the floor under the treatment table. If you use table paper over sheets, then you can use this space for extra boxes of needles and cotton balls. Also try to keep a day’s worth of treatment items in each room. This prevents running out of your favorite length needles halfway through a treatment.

A writing surface of some kind to set charts on is a huge bonus.

If you have a smaller treatment room with no space for a cabinet or small desk, then perhaps you can install a corner shelf.

Another option is to purchase a drop-down desktop from a medical supply company. Those are very nice and sturdy and add a touch of professionalism to the room.

Lighting

Lighting is extremely important in your treatment rooms. Like the waiting area, there is a ‘too dark’ and a ‘too bright.’ The ideal setting is to have adjustable lighting. Overhead lights on the ceiling can be put on a dimmer switch if they are not florescent.

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If you do decide to go with florescent lights, use the full-spectrum ones so that the room does not have a ‘cold’ feel to it.

Then, add either a pedestal lamp in a corner or use a wall sconce that plugs in and has a power switch on the cord. We’re shooting for mood-lighting here, but you also need to have adequate light for a clear view of the tongue, the patient’s skin color, careful point location, and any other features that you may need to see during treatment.

Flooring

Carpet, carpet, carpet. Hardwood floors are nice and pretty, but they get dirty quickly, are difficult to keep warm, add to the noise level, and can lead to splinters if it’s real wood. Pergo or some other type of laminate wood is easier to maintain than real wood floors. However, like real wood, they will be noisier than carpet and can feel cold on bare little piggies. If you like hardwood or laminate flooring, use nice area rugs and hallway runners for warmth and quiet.

By using carpeting, you cut down on room noise, give the patient something soft and warm to step on in their bare feet, and you relieve yourself of the need to dust every day! When choosing carpeting, it’s best to go with something commercial.

Regular carpet may wear out quickly with the amount of foot traffic you are expecting. Spending a little extra now will get you another 3-5 years out of the carpet, if not longer.

Also, commercial carpeting comes in just as many colors as home carpeting and will go with whatever colors you’ve selected for the walls. Commercial carpets are typically short fiber carpets, have some level of water and stain resistance, and have padding already attached to them. When you are ready to get carpeting, take another trip to your local home remodeling

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store. They can help you choose something that will match the color scheme you’ve already chosen, and then they can either install it for you or show you how.

Another idea is to look for a carpet remnant store or look in the newspaper for hotels that are getting remodeled and giving away their old carpets. These are good low-money options, but your color choices will be severely decreased.

Feng Shui

Once you have chosen a particular feeling for your work space, some colors, carpets, and furniture, you might consider hiring a feng shui specialist for an hour or two to give their opinion about placement of objects and any other problems with the flow of qi in your space. Whether you go in for the more esoteric aspects of feng shui, some of the suggestions that may be made will be very practical. You may be pleasantly surprised at the impact that just moving a lamp or a picture, adding a plant or a mirror, or changing a wall color can have. It is something to give some serious consideration and the cost may be much less than you think.

A Final Note

The best part of interior design is: That which you do today, you can easily change tomorrow. Unless you are tearing out walls and plumbing, the things you do to the inside of your clinic can be corrected or updated with little effort. If the paint you put on the walls in room number three now looks too pink when seen in contrast to the new blue carpet, then you can repaint next weekend. Our final suggestion for your clinic decor is to be as creative as you can. Try new things often, fix them when they don’t work out, and have fun. If you don’t do anything at all in terms of decor, the most important thing is to keep your clinic clean, clean, clean, especially the bathrooms.

We simply cannot emphasize that point enough.

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Beyond how your clinic looks and smells, the way it feels to people will be based on the human element. How every patient is greeted, the tone of voice, dress, demeanor, and ‘scripts’ used by your front desk staff, as well as the last words they hear when they leave, play an important role in the feel and, ultimately, the placebo effect of your treatments.