Massage time and money
A role in your massage therapy business will be time and money a testament to your professional relationship with a patient. The client is late for an appointment what do you do? The client expects a full 50 minutes on the table. A defining role of your practice is how your are going to handle this with your patient and how do you retain your patient as a customer if they are going to mistreat your boundaries. First you must be willing to loose them as a patient if you think that they are abusing your professional time. How you manage your time sets a clear boundary beginning and finishing on time honors your professional boundaries in the profession.
Scheduling enough time in between massages lets you accommodate the preliminary interview and assessments, undressing, dressing and time to document your session. Leave a little amount of time between sessions to return phone calls and take a break, or the ability to accommodate a late or long appointment. This will allow your patient to come, get a full massage complete the session and plan their day around those activities. You should set policies regarding session length, later arrivals, no shows, and missed appointments. This will let your patients know ahead of time what to expect and also let them know that you respect their time and they should respect your time.
Money - ooooh the dreaded paying for services, some therapists have a hard time collecting payment for services don’t under estimate the time energy and touch you give to the patient. One therapist told me that one should always schedule the next appointment for a patient before asking for payment. Just as they leave the treatment room and feel all good about themselves and know that they want to come back for more. Have them schedule their next appointment. Then as a good cop bad cop gesture offer them the bill. When establishing a fee structure, the therapist has established professional boundary for payment. If you set fees too low or too high you have rendered a professional boundary infraction. Charging different fees for one client than the next could cause issues between patients. A client can challenge your professional boundary by not bringing money or check to pay for a session, writing a bad check or being late paying or not paying the bill.
