July 2002

How to Adjust Your Thinking About Patient Education
By Dr. Rob Jackson, DC

I wonder what it’s like for kindergarten teachers to arrive for the first day of class knowing, that by the end of the school year, they are expected to introduce a group of 4- and 5- year-olds to the cornerstones of all knowledge - reading and writing. From the perspective of a new teacher, the view from the head of the class is undoubtedly a startling one. For some children, this is their first experience in a structured learning environment, and they may be loud and pushy; others are quiet and shy, and still others anxiously await, wondering exactly how and where they will fit in to the great scheme of organized education.

It must be difficult to observe the landscape of faces and not form instant judgments about who will reach their goals in these first critical steps, and who will fall short, potentially creating huge obstacles in the years to come. This scenario has many parallels that relate to your practice - with you as the teacher, and with your patients as the students.

You’ve heard the saying a thousand times, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Though the statement is true, what’s not addressed is the fact that the first impression may be wrong. How often do you find yourself realizing that a person you thought had it “all figured out,” exhibited a behavior that you categorized as “out of character,” or something you didn’t expect.

Perhaps, what is closer to the truth is that people are living, breathing, changing creatures, who have very individual experiences, all of which act as catalysts in their actions throughout their days. People aren’t always as they appear on the surface, and a first impression is really just that - one of a thousand other instances in which you can draw an opinion about who they are, the content of their characters, and potentially how much they can or will learn.

Consider these thoughts when a patient walks through your door for the first time. Imagine, as you read this, all the things that typically race through your head as you engage in a consultation. We are all guilty of pre-qualification - that is, deciding who people are and what they are capable of, before we even know them. We size up our patients and determine how we will proceed based on what we think we know from this initial encounter.

Sometimes, we are so sure about our abilities of prediction, we often mention it to the staff, saying, “We’ll never see that guy again,” or, “I bet she’ll tell everyone she knows to come see us.” It is these behaviors that can encumber the patient education process. As soon as you think you know how patients will behave when they leave your office, you alter your education process, often omitting the very steps necessary to create life-long wellness patients who refer.

How could any one of us know what a person is capable of understanding from an initial impression? Don’t many of these same patients go to jobs everyday where they use skills you and I do not possess? They learned these tasks and get paid to perform these functions that interest them or are beneficial for their job duties. Surely they can learn the benefits of chiropractic care and have enough knowledge to spread the word in an intelligent fashion.

Educational materials presented at appropriate times in a proper fashion stand the best chance of being heard, understood, accepted, and applied. The key is to prepare a system of providing patient education and following through on the steps as patients go through their visit plan. Little bits of information at each visit can be well-received and easily digested, whereas piles of information in one visit are overwhelming and often go unheard or are simply misunderstood. Your staff members are key players in setting this system up, as they often have the first and last word with patients. Include them in the creation and implementation of your education procedures, and you will have a team fully invested in your success.

It’s critical to to be flexible in your process and to customize the patient education plan to specific circumstances. For example, a new patient who comes to you in severe pain is not ready to learn the benefits of wellness care. A patient in severe pain probably doesn’t even want to take the few minutes necessary to sit through an introductory video, and may even need help completing the initial paperwork. There are times when you must eliminate the factors that prevent your patients from wanting to learn before you can begin your normal educational process. When this happens, focus on the issues causing the most interference, and then, when those items have been put to rest, begin the process from the first step that was missed, or from where it makes the most sense.

Patients who arrive in pain and leave more comfortably become powerful referral magnets before they even understand the basics of chiropractic. Imagine the impact they could have on your practice when they have learned why chiropractic really works.

When you are unconditionally educating your patients, you’ll find that at least 60% of your new patient referrals will come from existing patients. Building your practice from within is, without exception, the most affordable and easiest marketing method you’ll discover. There are great personal rewards to taking injured patients from a symptom-based mentality to wellness care, while having them refer their spouses, their kids, their parents, and friends as a result.

An effective patient education protocol that covers the broad range of chiropractic benefits will teach everything from the significance of the nervous system in overall health, to the impact that wellness care can have on a patient’s quality of life.

Share and teach your philosophy, while approaching your patients from a symptom-based point of view. None of us wants to rely solely on a symptom-based practice, but let’s remember that our ability to make giant leaps in changing how patients see real health can start by meeting them in the mental place they may already be. We must validate their current thought process to bring them over to a better understanding of real “healthcare,” instead of the old, traditional, and outdated model of “sickness care.”

Keeping an open mind to these principles of learning and the education process will speed the growth of your practice and help you touch and change more lives through chiropractic. The time to adjust your thinking is now - before you see your next new patient.

Dr. Jackson is the founder and president of Back Talk Systems, Inc., a patient education company that now features the “12 Visits for Life” protocol package, focused on creating lifelong patients who refer. A graduate of Life University, Dr. Jackson has been practicing for 20 years and is a certified Thompson Technique instructor. He can be reached at 800-937-3113, or sign on to his company’s website at www.backtalksystems.com