Is your clinic sabotaging your results?

Is your clinic room sabotaging your results with patients. Here's the thing we often think about when it comes to building trust with patients, when it comes to helping them feel relaxed, you know, building that therapeutic relationship, we think about the people in the relationship, and obviously that's really key. You need to be able to connect well with your patients, need to understand them, understand what they need and exhibit that. However, I would say that one of the overlooked areas that really can get massive, massive results or really sabotage us is our clinic environment. And here's why. When your patient comes to see you for the first time, they are in the unknown. They don't know what they're turning up to. They don't know what's going on, they don't know what they're going to see. When you're in the unknown, you are instantly put into a state of slight anxiety and fight or flight. You are triggering a stress response. And that is a response your patients coming in with on top of all the stress of them probably being in pain or struggling with symptoms. So when they turn up to your practice, their brain is constantly scanning for signs of threat or for signs of safety. And the more signs of safety we can give them, the more they see, the more likely they are to relax, trust us and build that connection. So we need to give them signs of safety wherever we can. And I think of there's two ways of doing this. You can think of safety in terms of warmth and competence. So warmth, is this a place where they can relax in? Is this a place where they feel like it's comfortable, it's friendly, you know, it's not a stark clinical environment there somewhere that feels a bit like. A little bit like home. Okay, so, for example, one way we do this is I've got some plants here behind me. The plants are very good at creating that sense of nature, creating that sense of relaxation. However, you've also got competence because it might be a nice comfy room, but if it doesn't seem like a professional works here, we're going to have a problem. You don't want them coming into your literal living room after all. Now, you can't see the layout of the room here, but the room that I've set things up here is the patient comes in from the door over there, just the left of those cupboards, and their seats are here. And right here are all my certificates. And I've positioned them specifically because having certificates up is obviously a sign of competency. But they're set up so that when the Patient walks in the room. It's literally what they see across from them. So they walk in and they see certificates. Subconsciously, their brain goes, this is someone competent who knows what they're doing. When they sit down at the chair and they're looking at me, the certificates are in the background there still. So there's a constant signal there. Another one. I've talked about this before in other posts. My stethoscope. Now, I don't really ever use this. If the batteries on my automatic blood pressure cuff die, I will use this stethoscope. So it's barely there. It's mainly a prop, but it sits on my desk right here. It's another sign of competence. It's assigned to the patient. You are in the hands of an expert health professional who knows what they're doing. Now, that's the treatment room itself. There's many different ways that we can do this, as many different ways we can balance it. But it's really important that you know that you can not just help or hinder that with your communication, but the room as well, and that you want to have both warmth and competence. So little challenge for you. I want you to go and look around your room. If you're in clinic right now, have a look around. If not, wait until you get in the next day. In your mind's eye, there are many, many things that you will miss because you're used to it. Because when you come into this room, it's safety, it's the known world, but for your patient, it's different. And have a look in reception as well. The reception area can get overlooked for this. You want to have both signals. Now, in our practice, when we did this, our clinic environment, it's set up, it's quite comfortable, it's quite high end because those are the patients that we tend to see. But we looked around and thought, there's not so much warmth. We've got the competency down, but we could do with adding a little bit of warmth. One of the ways we did this actually was one of my CAS bought this little guy. So it's a little model made of nuts and bolts of a chiropractor. If you look, it's actually putting the patient in side posture there. So we put this on the front desk and it's a little bit of warmth because it's a little bit of humor, it's a little cute thing. The amount of comments we get from patients who are like, oh, I love that. I've just seen that. So warmth doesn't have to be like, you know, the, the painting pictures I've got behind me with flowers on the spine. It doesn't have to be plant life. It can be something that just makes people smile. So think about that. Strike that balance there. Because if you get this right once, once you've put in the effort to do this, it will pay off for every patient every time they come in. The leverage on this is huge. Get it wrong and you can undo some of that, but you've got a bunch of stuff on the wrong end of the scale. You're gonna have to try and overpower with your communication. So work on that. Think about that warmth and competency. Now, I will say we don't have time to get into this here, but I'm gonna share something with you shortly. You obviously, certain patients will need more of a balance one way or the other. Some people will really need more signs of warmth. That's what helps them feel trusted. Others are going to focus more on the competency. You can't change the room around for every patient, but have the room up so that it satisfies both. And then when you see the patient and you meet them, then you can bias your communication to their preferred style. Now, there's a lot we could do. I have a whole like five hour course on this for social styles that we're not going to get into now. But what I am going to share with you in a couple of days is a resource completely for free that you can use to help learn how to do that. So you can rapidly identify what style is this patient, what are their preferred methods of communication? And one of the things you'll think about is do they want warmth and friendliness or do they want professionalism and competency? And you can then bias your communication to that. So the environment satisfies everybody. And then you can really tailor it with how you act to them. So think, think about that. Look around your room the next time you're in. Look at where's the warmth? Where's the competency? Am I missing something? Do we need more of something? And then if you decide to hit reply, let me know. Message me, drop me an email, let me know any change you decide to bring in. Because when we share this stuff together, it really helps everybody because we'll all come up with different ideas. So have a think about that. Look at that next time in the room and let me know how you get on. And keep an eye out for another email in a couple of days where I'll share with you. That free resource to help tailor your communication to your patients. So I'll see you then.