CE events: More of burden than a benefit?

Sponsored by RockTape

Choose chiropractic as a profession and continuing education (CE) classes will be required regularly.

Although the amounts vary by state—Alabama requires 18 CEs per fiscal year whereas Wisconsin mandates 40 CEs every two years, for instance—it’s inevitable that you’re going to be spending at least some portion of your time taking classes designed to enhance your skills and keep you updated on the latest trends and advances in the chiropractic profession.

While the goal of these CEs is ultimately to educate you and make you a better chiropractor, oftentimes DCs get so busy that they look at the classes as more of a burden than a benefit.

However, there are a few things you can do with your CE classes that will help you get the most from them, making them more than worth your time.

Offer more services

Depending on the type of CEs you take, you may be able to use what you’ve learned during the event to increase your service offerings. This does a couple of positive things for your business. The most obvious is that it boosts your income potential as the more treatment options you offer, the more you stand to make. But there’s another advantage as well.

When you can provide your patients with a variety of services, you start to become their go-to healthcare provider for a variety of needs. This means that they’ll come to you for a number of different ailments, strengthening the doctor-patient bond and increasing their loyalty, two factors that will keep them walking back in your door.

This works well when getting CE credits in areas like taping, IASTM (instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization), and various other enhanced healing techniques.

Expand your product line

If your CE event involves learning more about a specific product or category of products, you can get the most out of it by incorporating those products into your current product line and offering them directly to your client base. This enables you to pass on the information you just learned in a way that will benefit patients who entrust you with their healthcare needs.

Just like offering more services helps you treat more patient issues, the same is also true when you expand your product lines. While chiropractic can certainly help with a number of healthcare problems, there are other products that offer even more assistance, resulting in greater patient care.

Consider expanding your product line with obtaining CEs involving topicals, supplements, or other products commonly used in chiropractic, such as tapes and assistive supports.

One final word of advice

In addition to being an instructor for various types of classes ranging from RockTape use (where he’s been a Master Instructor for about six years) to use of Class IV Deep Tissue Laser Therapy for pain relief, Perry Nickelston, DC, with Stop Chasing Pain is also a chiropractic physician. As both an instructor and an attendee, Nickelston says he “sees it from both ends” so he has one piece of advice that he gives his students and that he also takes when he’s the one in the classroom seat.

“Many people get so much information that they don’t know where to start,” says Nickelston. That’s why he always suggests that his students pick the one thing that resonates with them the most and decide right then and there to implement it when they return to work.

Nickelston even goes so far as to tell his classroom attendees to figure out which client they’re going to use it on, saying, “I want you to know it [what he’s teaching], so think like I’m going to call on you and ask you what it is.” This helps the CE students think about the practical application of what they’re learning by actually imagining their real-life patients receiving its benefit.

Plus, by asking students to focus only on one thing, it breaks the class materials down and makes them more manageable. Instead of trying to remember everything that’s being taught and getting overwhelmed, they think about only one thing and can walk away with an action plan in hand.

Nickelston says he follows this same type of advice when he earns his CEs as well by taking the top three things he learns in a class or at an event and focus on one at a time until he’s implemented all three. Follow this same practice and you will get the most out of your CE classes, no matter how many you need.

About RockTape

RockTape is a global leader in sports medicine products and education. Located in Silicon Valley, RockTape helps patients and athletes “go stronger, longer” with the world’s best kinesiology tape, powerful pain-relieving topicals, unique evidence-informed education seminars, mobility tools, and joint support accessories.

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