If you’re one of those chiropractors guilty of caring for patients too much, you’re likely to have unhealthy attachments to what patients do. You probably take the occasional lack of perfect compliance and follow through, personally. It’s counter-intuitive, but this is usually a sign that you’ve made practice about you, rather than patients. Fearing patients who override your recommendations won’t get the results they expect and will blame you, is merely a deception. This became even clearer to me after I completed my three-hour “What Patients Do What They Do and What To Do About” presentation for the Blair Society yesterday morning in Charleston, SC.
After explaining the disconnect between knowing and doing, making the case that patients do what they do because they believe what they believe, it dawned on me! Patients have an “operating system” just like your computer does. Software governs the hardware you’re using to read this. Similarly, a patient’s beliefs govern what they do with their body. Their complex programming, consisting of thousands of lines of code that incorporate their beliefs (conscious and unconscious) fears, priorities, self-image and countless other details controls the whole show. And like Windows, they have buggy software that can be erratic, unstable and lockup. Combine this with a variety of viruses, worms and spy ware, and it’s a miracle that patients even make it to your office in the first place!
Ironically, most chiropractors focus on a patient’s hardware; bones, muscles, curves, balance, alignment, etc. instead of a patient’s software; beliefs, attitudes, fears or priorities. That’s like paying to have the brakes in your teenager’s car replaced every 30 days and being uninterested in his or her driving habits that are putting such an unusual wear on their brakes!
Of course the skills needed to accomplish this isn’t taught in chiropractic college. So most chiropractors simply mint words at the X-ray view box or report of findings thinking their outside-in approach will make the needed changes in the patient’s beliefs. But it rarely does.
Installing new code in the patient without testing it by asking questions, sets you up for a variety of errors, such as poor follow through, unexpected drop out, few reactivations and even fewer referrals.