Show Don't Tell Pt.2 - Set Yourself Up for Success

Okay, so step one in getting patients to actually feel the difference you're making for them. I talked about last time. One of the points that I think we really miss as chiropractice is getting patients to feel within their own body the changes that we're making. This is often called interoception. It's something that makes a big difference in terms of their overall well being. When patients get a better sense of how they feel internally, they're going to have a better sense of if they're moving in repetitive ways that are going to create problems, they're going to have better sense if they're sitting too long, this kind of thing. And it just improves overall MSK health. So we want to improve that interoception, that sense of what's going on. And I talked about feeling last time and that being a big part. But to be fair, we do need to set the stage for this before. And what I do with this is I actually start part of this education, so to speak, not by, you know, showing the patient on their body, but actually before I've even done an examination. The way I do it is this is I'm during the case history, I'm talking to a patient and I'm pulling out things about their experience. So, yes, where they have the pain, the words they use to describe the pain, getting the emotion behind it, if you can as well, not necessary, but definitely add some flavor. I'm getting a sense of what it feels like subjectively in their body. And I'm not a massive empath. I don't start feeling the stiffness in my neck, but I can use the words, I can aback them. So you get this really deep aching pain that runs right through your neck and starts to spread into your head. Feels really dull up the back there, makes you feel really tired. If I can repeat that back to a patient and they're going, yeah, that's it. They know I understand that. The next step is I tell them once I've got a sense of what's going on, you know, I've asked some questions and I've got a pretty good idea of what we're going to look at in the exam. I tell them what I'm expecting to find in the examination. Not in great detail, but I will pull up an image on the screen of a spine and I will say what I suspect we're going to find in a moment that's causing this is that you have an area of your spine where, where things do not move normally. All these spines they should move quite nicely and free up. But if you get an area that is really locked up like that, and then I'll go into my explanation, that can create a real sense of stiffness, that can create irritation to the muscles and they can pull, that can create inflammation in other areas that are overworking. However you would. You would think about what's going on, but you give them a rough idea. You're not giving a diagnosis. I'm not talking about discs or facets or muscle strains or particular ligaments, but I'm letting them know. It sounds to me like there is a movement issue here and there's likely an area here where things are not moving like they should. And when you get that, that can often create this deep, dull, aching pain. It can spread up the neck and give you that dull pain of the back of the head as well where these muscles tighten up. I give them a very brief explanation of my. Essentially my critical thinking right now, my critical reasoning, what I expect will find. And I use the words and I use the emotions that they give me. You know, it can feel really tiring when you've got it there all the time. There's. So now I'm linking a feeling that they already have into an image and into some words. So I'm linking their felt experience to some things I'm showing them. I do it on a screen. You can pull up a model, however you choose to do that. Something that you can have visual still in the room, though, when you get them on the bench and start the assessment. And this is really key because I'm telling them partly that if we find that that's good, that tells me that you're in the right place, we get that sorted. That can get you feeling a lot better. So that creates some hope. And then it also means that when I go to check them, provided I find something around there, they're going to go, wow, this guy really knows what he's talking about. Occasionally I don't. And that's okay because I just say, okay, that's moving better than I expected. That means it's coming from somewhere else. So let's have a look and see where else is causing this. And I just tell them it wasn't what I expected, but we're going to find it. Doing that is a very good way to build confidence and build your patients trust in you. But also, more importantly, it's setting them up with an expectation, is cueing them in on what they might feel. So when we feel, when we find that area, they're paying much more attention to it and they're paying attention to how it feels beyond pain. So have a think about that. If you don't do this regularly, I would really encourage you to start doing it. If you're a bit nervous about it, just start with an easy patient. If you think this is a bit complex, there's a lot going on, don't start with that patient. But you're not promising what's going on, you're just letting them know what you expect. But I can tell you that when you do this, particularly when you get in the habit of it, as you start to feel certain things in the spine and particular ways I'll share with you next time to cue them into that, it can make a really big difference in terms of them properly understanding what is going on without you having to do loads of explanations and loads of education, loads of jargon and that sort of thing. So give that a go and then I'll see you in the next video. We'll talk about what we're going to do with that information.