Copyright 2006 Kelly Robbins

Working in the healthcare industry is different than working in any other industry. In healthcare, you will usually work with people who are experiencing a pain - whether physical or mental. In addition to stopping that pain you know there are a lot of other ways you can help people.

You know that you can help people live a healthier and happier life. Theres so much more to life and living pain free. That is a minimum achievement. You can teach them not only how to live pain free, but how to have more energy. You can teach them how to live a life filled with health and wellness.

In your healthcare business you see the same things over and over again. If you stop, or even just lessen your client's pain a little bit, they stop coming to see you. Frustrating as it is, you don't know how to stop this cycle.

There is something that you CAN do to help these people.

Teach them.

What's that? You already know this? You've been teaching them everything you know since day one!

Well...

That may be part of your problem.

Let me show you a scenario I see all the time.

Sally, a patient at your chiropractic practice, started coming to see you about three months ago. She was having unbearable migraines and had been experiencing neck pain since her car accident earlier in the year. Right away you saw what the problem was and began treating her. Right away you lessened her pain.

She loves you!

The first few weeks she came to her appointments you had handouts and packets with all sorts of information about subluxations and Cervicogenic Headaches. You explained to her how the convergence of afferents from the trigeminal nucleus, pons and the upper three or four cervical spinal nerves provides for various patterns of referred pain. You explained to her that this implies an anatomical and physiological connection between the nerves of the cervical spine and the mechanisms of headache.

Sally is such a polite and friendly client (one of your favorites) that she doesn't really have any questions for you, but she is really glad you are stopping the pain. It may seem obvious in my exaggerated example here, but the truth is that Sally doesn't understand a thing you're saying. She's too polite to say anything to you. She didn't want to look stupid and admit she couldn't understand the handouts you gave her.

Obviously you've been giving them to your other patients and they understood them.

Sally's been coming for a while and you've become friendly. You've covered all the basics of her health and how chiropractic care benefits people. And you don't want to bore Sally by being repetitive. Now when Sally visits you are comfortable around each other and share stories about your kids and upcoming holiday plans.

But there are several problems here. Sally didn't understand what you said the first time and was too shy to ask questions. She's much more comfortable now talking about her family and other small talk. However, what is also clear is that for you to keep Sally as a client, you need to educate her about what's wrong and how to fix it. To keep her as a client once you've stopped "her pain" you need to teach her how ongoing chiropractic care can help her in a million ways. YOUR job is to do this in a way SHE understands.

The key to doing this successfully is to teach Sally in small amounts. Small chunks at a time. While you've spent many, many years learning all this technical stuff, she has not.

Teach your clients one concept at a time, teach them every time they come in, and teach them using as many of their senses as you can.

For example, you can tell Sally things about her headaches and how your spinal adjustments are helping her, but you also want her to have something written down that she can read and learn from later.

You also want to make sure you are talking to and writing to Sally in layman's terms. The daily newspaper writes to a fourth grade reading level. And so should you. Don't make copies of articles from your industry journals and leave them out for your patients to read. They can't and don't want to understand them. Your role, as their healthcare educator, is to translate.

Look at some of the ways you educate your clients. Are there any you can improve upon?