Howie’s take: I agree with Ho Sun about personalizing your office. My hobby is taking pictures when I travel. In case if you haven’t noticed, most of the photos on the blog posts are travel pictures. When asked, my receptionist tells patients that I took them and had them printed. This makes a good conversation starter and puts patients at ease.
My front waiting room has mostly Arizona landscape and cactus photos. They’re much more interesting to look at than my diplomas, which I keep in my office. One of my colleagues in town does the same thing and is known for his African safari and Antarctica penguin photos.
Here are pictures of some of them. Most of these were taken with a old iPhone so I can’t blow them up bigger or they’d become depixelated. I used the site www.fabness.com. Sign up for their email list and the canvases typically cost $15-20. You can also use Costco. Unfortunately I’ve been lazy and not put any up recently. Some of my patients have actually been asking when I’ll get new ones up.
I also got a photo print under acrylic glass from this company: https://us.whitewall.com
It’s significantly more expensive than the canvas photos, but I’m going to get more of these as they look really nice.
Since I grew up as a big fan of the Philadelphia sports teams, I have a Eagles super bowl poster and a Phillies World Series print in my office. I have a patient who I did cataract surgery on that wears Patriots hats, shirts, pants and socks to every appointment. When she saw my poster she just smiled and congratulated me 😀
Finally, in your waiting room you will want to buy coffee table books or magazines for patients to read. Some of my colleagues have a TV, but you don’t want to plan CNN or Fox News or you’ll wind up offending half the patients. It might be better to have nature videos or documentaries. Some offices have educational streaming which is provided for free by some companies, but unfortunately this often includes advertising, which I’d rather have my office free of.
Here’s a magazine rack that I bought on Amazon and had mounted:
If you are broke and want to get magazines on the cheap, use your leftover frequent flyer miles at this link: https://www.magsformiles.com
It probably varies by area, but the most popular magazines are Phoenix Magazine, National Geographic, and the gossip magazines. I love it when I see 80 year old guys reading the gossip magazines while dilating. You’ll also notice a copy of Weldimg Journal above. One of my patients brought it in. Phoenix magazine usually gets stolen in a few weeks, but no one has taken the Welding Journal yet… 😎
