Chiropractic Practice Blog

Adjusting patients is not your purpose.

It's one of the most common unhelpful beliefs shared by chiropractors who believe that the highest calling of a chiropractor is to adjust as many people as possible.

More likely, adjusting patients is a means to help advance or pursue your higher purpose. Do you know what that is? Knowing equips you to avoid the trap of measuring your worth by how many people you touch.

If you've been seduced by this easiest of metrics, what number do you have in mind? 10,000? 100,000? A million?

It comes down to choosing between going wide (superficial) or going deep (intimate).

Going wide is often the first approach, measuring one's self-worth by focusing on how many patients are seen in a day, week or month. Yet, the shallowness of these relationships eventually take their emotional and spiritual toll as practice becomes mechanical, hollow and increasingly unfulfilling.

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The patient brings more to your table than what you do on the table.

Many chiropractors have been seduced into thinking their diagnostic skills or golden hands are the key to a patient’s recovery. And, given the inclination of patients to credit drugs or their wonderful surgeon for their health, it’s no wonder chiropractors are equally susceptible.

Is a well-delivered adjustment important? Of course. But far more important is the fact the patient posses the inborn ability to heal. There’s the real hero! That’s the real miracle! Celebrate that.

Want to help more people? Make sure every patient and everyone on your team understands this simple reality. Otherwise, you may be tempted to take credit (or blame) for something that isn’t yours. That’s stealing. Be mindful that chiropractic care doesn’t add anything or take anything away. Instead, it revives, invokes and restores what is already there, aching to be released.

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When you care too much it can make patients feel guilty or ashamed.

You likely chose a career in health care because you place a high value on health and well-being. In fact, restoring your own health with chiropractic may have inspired you to become a chiropractor.

It’s tempting to project our own values and priorities onto patients, but few are likely to place as much value on their health as you. This is a common source of destructive judgment (and frustration) that can push patients away from the most passionate and health-conscious chiropractor.

“I should care more about my health. I hope Dr. YourName- Here doesn’t think less of me because I don’t measure up.”

How do you know if you successfully avoid producing this guilt and shame among practice members? One way is to count how many patients are unafraid to announce their last visit, thanking you before discontinuing care.

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Creating a safe place to fail enhances the likelihood of reactivations.

Virtually every chiropractic patient has heard the warning that “once you see a chiropractor you have to go for the rest of your life.” Naturally, this isn’t true. Patients don’t have to do anything. Yet, many chiropractors refuse to clear up this urban legend, perhaps in the hopes that if they don’t, it will persuade patients to embrace chiropractic as a long-term lifestyle adjunct.

It doesn’t work.

Instead, it creates a sense of unease, ultimately culminating in patients discontinuing care without saying goodbye, turning the front desk CA into bloodhound, causing patients to avoid you in the grocery store and prompting them to seek care from a different chiropractor when they have their inevitable relapse.

Talk about it. Laugh about it. Make it easier for patients to leave. When you do, you make it easier for them to return!

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Reactivations and referrals are the keys to a healthy practice.

Unlike new patient marketing, enhancing reactivations and referrals are signs that reveal your health: your social health.

Since many patients must start and stop care several times over several years before accepting the value of some type of ongoing supportive care, a steady stream of reactivations means your healthy detachment honored their free will agency, making it emotionally safe for them to return without an imagined, "I-told-you-so" scolding.

Well done.

And since a referral is an inspired gift of trust, ample numbers reveal your ability to serve patients without resorting to guilt, shame or judgment to get them to do what you would do. Again, a reflection of your social health.

Turns out, a busy practice is a sign of your social health, not merely your adjusting prowess or marketing skills. True success is always the who, not the do.

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