Yet one may aspire. And if you are able to perceive and appreciate truly professional surroundings you may hope to school yourself by association and study to harmonize with them.
Choice of Articles
In choosing the contents of your office keep in mind good taste, utility, and the psychological effect upon all visitors. Remember that you expect to spend many hours each day in the company of your furniture, and select such things as will contribute to a proper professional state of mind in yourself. A Chiropractor’s profession is in many ways like, yet in many ways unlike, any other. Therefore his office equipment, while following in general the equipment of other professional offices, must be selected with an eye to the special and particular needs of the Chiropractor and his patients. Too little attention has been paid thus far by the profession to the selection of office equipment.
Furniture in General
The furnishing of an office depends upon the amount and disposition of the room at your command. One must have at least a waiting room and a private office even if a single rented room must be cheaply partitioned to make the division. A larger suite is a better investment when possible. In the waiting-room should be found easy chairs, library table, hall-rack, mirror, and an easy divan or couch. The floor should be covered with a good rug or carpet and the walls properly and cleanly decorated and hung with restful, pleasant pictures. A book-case filled with carefully selected books is a good addition.
On entering your private office the patient should see your diploma, which hangs in full view of the entrance and which bespeaks with no weak voice your fitness to practice, your professional ability. The importance of this point cannot be overestimated. The intelligent visitor expects you to have had careful training and to possess thorough knowledge of your work. If he notes the diploma as evidence of it and of your pride in your college he is assured.
If only two rooms are at your command the second must be at once consulting room, adjusting room, dressing room. As such it should contain your desk, desk chair, chairs for the patient or patients, adjusting table or tables, towel cabinet, lavatory, and a curtained recess for a dressing-table, chair, and hooks for hanging clothing. On the wall hang those charts from which it is at times necessary to explain a part of the human mechanism to the inquirer.
This room should convey a two-fold impression—business and professional. It should contain the special paraphenalia of your profession and some of the suggestive contents of the ordinary business office, such as desk, card-index file, typewriter, etc.
Let us consider these points more in detail.