Selecting an Area of Your Office to Show Video

	Many offices use a TV/VCR or TV/DVD combination player and mount it up in a corner of the reception area or consultation area.

If you're new to using video into your office, you may have some questions about where to locate your VCR and television set in your office. While there are many possibilities, which vary with office layout, in order of preference, here are our recommendations:

Reception Room

We like the reception area because it makes it easy for staff to implement and monitor, plus it increases the chances that active patients (or their guests) would have the opportunity to see the videos. Many offices will use a television mounting system which allows the television to hang from the ceiling or on the wall in some out-of-the-way corner of the reception area. Situate the set so you can reserve a special seat for new patients to complete their paperwork and watch your videos. If there are lots of distractions, you might want to consider wireless headphones or one of the other locations listed below.

Doctor's Private Office

To avoid uprooting and moving patients around the office too much, consider showing videos in the room in which the consultation or report of findings is usually delivered. Just make sure that the office is organized and that confidential records are not exposed to an unsupervised patient watching video.

Patient Education Center

If you have the space, some offices devote an entire room to their patient education efforts. This is often a room too small for patient care. Outfit this room with concept posters, spinal models or other educational tools to explain or illustrate the chiropractic approach to better health.

Examination Room

This is offered as a last resort suggestion only because many examination rooms tend to be more cold and clinical, diminishing the warmth and human touch most patients like about chiropractic. If this is the only space in your office that will accommodate video, just make sure it's arranged in such a way as to avoid unnecessary distractions.

Choosing the Right Equipment

Keep it simple. These days the combination TV/VCR makes showing video easy. And if you're new to video or you're ready to join the rest of us in the 21st Century, go the DVD route. All the videos are in one place. You don't have to rewind them. And the picture and sound are crystal clear.

The size of your screen is simply a factor of the viewing distance. Before buying new equipment, measure the distance between where the patient will be seated and where the TV set will be installed. Then go shopping, positioning yourself the same distance from the screens in the showroom. Most offices discover that sets with a 15" or 17" screen are more than adequate.