Dr. Douglas Sea
Recently while having a Work-ation in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota I had several opportunities to adjust Dr. Sovinsky; as well as Dr Thackerey and all of our corresponding families. Traveling by car afforded me the luxury of packing my portable adjusting table just to properly tend to our flock! After one such morning adjustment cycle; Dr. Frank got off the table and proclaimed: “Wow; why doesn’t everybody get adjusted?” This simple statement prompted some very profound dialogue!
My basic premise was first and foremost that most people do not miss what they do not know exists. For example a child growing up in a war torn, poverty filled third world country somewhere probably does not miss the taste of ice-cream. Someone who has never been adjusted before simply has no way to appreciate the benefits of appropriately administered chiropractic care. Once they have benefited from true patient centered-plus care they will often return for follow-up care or maybe even less frequent but consistent adjustments simply to “feel right” or “feel better”.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, we as a profession have messed up an amazing opportunity provided to us by the forefathers of our profession. We have lost sight of the fact that the service we provide has inherent value. Not necessarily “priceless” as some in our profession would rant; but of a legitimate value. A value that is not necessarily dependent on “who is paying the bill”.
Because we have lost the appreciation for the value we provide; we have a hard time understanding why someone would be willing to exchange their hard earned cash for the opportunity to spend a couple of minutes in your presence to receive your skill. As a result we have had to create a plethora of gimmicks and schemes to first entice people through our doors and more gimmicks and/or scare tactics to keep them there; like the proverbial “Chiropractic Practice Hostage”. How many times have you heard from your own patients that they didn’t want to start going to a chiropractor because “once you start you have to go forever”!
When patients are provided a true Patient Centered-Plus experience you can be assured that more and more of them will be asking “Why doesn’t everybody get adjusted like I do?”
Tags: chiropractic coaching
Love the analogy of the child in the third world not missing ice cream. I’d like to add that by virtue of our delivery, our interaction with the patient and the “dance” between the DC and the patient, clarity does not often exist. By clarity I mean from which paradigm of healing is the DC delivering (they often are confused here) and the paradigm the patient is expecting. Perception is everything. I recently enjoyed an article written by Epstein and Senzon about Reorganizational healing vs Restorative Therapeutics. Highly recommend it…here’s the link.
http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/acm/15/5