Get “in the zone” with your patients

Hey guys. Chris from Patient Centered Training and today's video. It comes off the back of a conversation I had with a colleague recently. This follows on a little bit from my video last time about how the evidence based side sometimes, well, often defines itself by what it isn't and how we tend to run away from things that we see other sides of the profession do rather than think about. Is there an ethical useful way to do that? And the topic we ended up talking about was efficiency and treatment times. And you get this kind of divide within chiropractic where the stereotype is vitalistic chiropractors have shorter treatment times. They're more about seeing more people, packing them in close together and they're going to make more money per hour. Whereas evidence based chiropractors, we're not motivated by money and we will have longer treatment times and we won't cram people in so much. It's a stereotype. I think it's often not as true as we think it is. But, but the topic that came up around this was thinking about efficiency and thinking about how can we do the best job for the most number of people in an ethical way. And this is something that the vitalists talk about a lot. They talk about how many people they serve and this is the justification they use. Well, I can serve more people, I can help more people. And they do have a point. Obviously there's a bit where the trade off becomes too great, where the level of care you provide drops. So you're providing not very good care for a lot of people. I'm not arguing that at all. But the point my colleague made was really being efficient is a good thing. And we talked a little bit about how first of all, it's making sure you're working in what's often called your zone of genius or your area of expertise, which for me is manual therapy. Now I'm really interested in diet and I'm really a big fan of rehab. I think there's a key part, particularly for chronic people to get them better. But I'm not going to go and sit and talk through all that stuff myself with a patient. I'm going to refer that out to somebody else I know in my network who's a specialist because I'll give some basic big three rehab. I can give some basic dietary advice to suggest, but I'm not going to sit down with food Diary and I'm not going to spend 15 minutes watching somebody do all their exercises. I can help more people in that time. And it's going to be more efficient if I sit with where I've got my expertise and I then refer out to other people's areas of expertise as needed. But the point my colleague made that I thought was really interesting is they said as well, you need to think about flow states and what is the right number of people to see per hour that allows you to effectively get into and stay in a flow state. So if you're not aware of that, just search the term flow state. There's tons of research on this. It's when we're at our most productive, we're often buzzed, time seems to fly by, we're just on point. And you know, the point my colleague made was that if you space a visit too much, if you have too long, you don't get into a flow state and actually your level of care is going to drop. And it got me thinking about this and realizing, yeah, there's been some times, some evenings where I've really got into a flow and it's just, it's worked. Somebody's come in, seen what they need treated them, they've left, the next patient comes in. It's not a conveyor belt, it's not cookie cutter. But I really felt like I've been in the zone and I wanted to share that because I'd never thought about that before. But it's a really key point and I know when I'm in that flow state because I go home satisfied, time has flown by and I really feel like I've given a good level of care. I've really done my best for people today. And one thing to be aware of is if you space the visits out too much, you won't get into that. Now if you cram them in too much as well, that can happen. I certainly, I've experimented with shorter treatment times before and there is a point where I start to get a bit stressed and then I'm clock watching. I will not get into a flow state with that. So you need to balance it either side. But like I said, I think in the evidence based side we can tend to err too long sometimes and if we don't hit that flow state then we're not really going to give our best level of care. So have a think about that, see if that resonates with you. See if maybe you might want to trade playing around with that a little bit. It doesn't have to be a big thing. I'm not saying cut your treatment times in half, but maybe try experimenting with taking little bits off and seeing how that works. Or maybe you feel like you're in the flow state already, you're doing well, in which case, great, stick with it. But that was a new idea to me, so I thought I'd share that with you. As always, any questions or comments, let me know below. But otherwise, I'll be back soon for another video. Take care.