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Setting Up a Private Practice As a Clinical Psychologist

Continued from: Setting Up A Private Practice: Storing Files

Location

The location of the office can be quite influential on the therapy. Patients will feel more confident visiting an office in a middle class neighbourhood than one in an area that is noisy and crowded. It would be best to choose a place close to public transportation and with a convenient parking lot nearby, one not easily associated with the office of the psychologist (Blau, 1988).

Room Arrangement

The physical setting of the psychologist's office is very important as it will be both the first impression, and a continuous influence on the therapy.

A very important requirement in choosing a suitable office space is good sound conditioning of the building. Lack of sound isolation may allow the staff or people in the office hear the therapy session, breaking the patient's confidentiality. Even though originally expensive, a thick rug for the floors would make the room more sound proof, and thus, more confidential (Blau, 1988).

The therapist should be sitting at the same level with the patient, not across a desk and not in a bigger or more massive chair, which would set up a communication barrier and speak of the therapist's dominant position. A chair simpler than the one in which the patient sits would be preferred for the therapist. If a patient sits down in the nicest chair in the room, s/he would feel that his/her needs are important and a priority for the therapist.

Psychologist and the patient should not be sitting too close - the chairs, even in a very small room should be at least 1.5 meters apart, so that the patient does not feel that his personal space is being invaded. The chairs should not be too far apart, either - from a distance of 5 meters an informal conversation could turn into a rigid interview.

The decoration of the office should be rather neutral. Too many pictures or other ornaments or any personal photographs are likely to be a distraction during therapy (Blau, 1988). However, a couple of neutral pictures, as images of nature, for example, would be a good decoration. One needs to be careful not to clatter up the room as it causes negative reactions (Blau, 1988) and stress in both patient and therapist.

Lightning should be medium. Overly dark rooms create a sleepy and a little too intimate atmosphere, while overly bright spaces are irritating.

The colour of the walls is an interesting detail to choose. One should not use blue-violet color, as it is equated with sadness and fatigue (Levy, 1984), nor pink, as the colour and with it the psychologist would be perceived as neither serious nor professional by many people.

The colour choice would mostly depend on what is known about colour preferences of people in general. Kindergarten children, for example, prefer red, yellow, and blue. The colour preferences change with age, from warm to cool color as a child gets older (Rosenfeld, 1977). Blue is judged the most common favourite colour for the children from five to thirteen (Schulhof, 1979) and one of the three most favourite colours for adults (the other two being cyan-blue and red) (Lee, 1999). Also, blue rooms were recorded to cause a slightly higher positive mood in the subjects than red rooms did (Stone, 2001), while in another study red offices were reported to cause more dysphoria in workers than blue-green offices (Kwallek et al., 1997). So, blue would be a good choice for the office, while the waiting room can be of another colour, as cyan-blue.

Waiting room

A waiting room is mandatory for the patients' convenience. It is a good "transition" space between the stressful "outside" and psychologist's office. With this in mind, a waiting room should be made into a pleasant, comfortable place where patients can sit and read or relax undisturbed by the outside noise.

Couches are in general perceived as friendlier than hard chairs and soft individual arm-chairs are even better. In case if the office is to be shared between two or more therapists and there could be expected to be more than one person at a time waiting in the room it would not be convenient to have a few patients on one couch side by side without any respect for their personal space.

Plants are a good decoration for a waiting room (Blau, 1988). Music is also useful for relieving tension and making people feel more comfortable. A choice of music would depend somewhat on the age of the patients, but, in general, most non-aggressive styles would be fitting, soft rock, for example. Various magazines and other reading material would be helpful.

Clerical staff should be available for assistance to the patients, at the same time they should either be well separated from the patients by the design of the room or, even better, not be in the waiting room at all (Blau, 1988, p.51).

Continued here: Setting Up A Private Practice: Conclusion