As difficult as it is I try and set my own personal beliefs and philosophy aside when I educate my chiropractic patients. Rather than painting a narrow picture of what chiropractic is I try and present a broad range of information to my patients. I feed them the knowledge, plant the seed, and let them make up their own mind. Selfless chiropractic patient education is actually much easier than you might think. Let me walk through how I prioritize my chiropractic patient education.
To keep myself on track I evaluate all of my patient education materials by asking three questions, in order of most to least importance.
1. Am I doing this because it is in the best interests of the patient?
To keep myself on track I evaluate all of my patient education materials by asking three questions, in order of most to least importance.
1. Am I doing this because it is in the best interests of the patient?
2. Does this promote the entire chiropractic profession in general and not just MY niche and beliefs?
3. Is this good for my practice?
If I can answer YES to all three questions then I am comfortable in using whatever the patient education materials in question may be.
Numbers one and three are the easy goals. So how in the world can you be bothered with ensuring your patient education promotes the entire profession? It's much easier than you think. In a nutshell it boils down to thinking beyond promoting your own practice. Your patient education should promote, or at least do no harm to, the chiropractic profession as a whole. Here is how I try to promote my practice without warping the view of my patients regarding the chiropractic profession.
Rather than pushing ONLY my own techniques and point of view I keep much of my patient education vague. Of course I promote my techniques and therapies heavily, but I'm also very careful to point out that these are not the only techniques out there, even if they aren’t my choice for my practice.
Rather than pushing ONLY my own techniques and point of view I keep much of my patient education vague. Of course I promote my techniques and therapies heavily, but I'm also very careful to point out that these are not the only techniques out there, even if they aren’t my choice for my practice.
There are techniques and doctors out there I don't necessarily totally agree with. That's not to say these techniques or doctors are wrong. They just aren't my cup of tea. That doesn't mean they aren't right for the patient or for the profession. That doesn't mean I need to bash these techniques when I'm educating my patients. It’s bad for the patient and for the chiropractic profession. Let me give you the perfect example.
One of my chiropractic colleagues in town utilizes certain low force techniques exclusively. His advertising and patient education usually contains statements to the effect of "no dangerous twisting or cracking", "no painful cracking", "no twisting or popping" . . . you get the point. While this may promote his practice and technique, it isn't doing much for the rest of the profession.
Don’t misunderstand me, I'm all for low force techniques. They are great for many conditions and they are ideal for certain patients and for those apprehensive about traditional Gonstead or Diversified adjusting. Low force adjusting techniques are great but that doesn't mean patients should be taught that other techniques are "bad".
The moral of the story is we should always make an attempt to think about how our day to day patient education activities affect the profession. Our advertising, practice protocols, and patient education procedures are all a reflection of the greater chiropractic whole. We should all make an effort to promote our profession AND our practices when educating patients. If this is too much commitment then an effort should be made to at least NOT degrade and discount other techniques and philosophies when we educate our patients.
No one is perfect and so we can’t always make the best choice for our profession. We owe it to each other to make the effort to do so however. As a profession we waste too much energy on dividing ourselves and competing with one another. That’s another soap box and another blog post! Until next time, thanks for reading!
No one is perfect and so we can’t always make the best choice for our profession. We owe it to each other to make the effort to do so however. As a profession we waste too much energy on dividing ourselves and competing with one another. That’s another soap box and another blog post! Until next time, thanks for reading!
-Dr. James
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment