This is a YouTube video titled "What DD Palmer & Pharmacology have in common" created on November 8, 2022. The content features a single speaker discussing the parallels between pharmacology and chiropractic principles, specifically focusing on patient education strategies. The speaker emphasizes the importance of minimal effective education to avoid overwhelming patients and improve retention, referencing traditional chiropractic principles and practical advice for practitioners.
And today's video, I actually wanted to share a concept that quite weirdly unites pharmacology with the traditional principles of chiropractic that DD Palmer came up with. So bear with me on this. It might seem a little bit odd. And this came out. I was working with a chiropractor fairly recently who was finding that a lot of his attempts to educate his patients were falling flat. That he was trying to get them to understand really key things that would help them do better. But then he would see them next time and they didn't remember any of it. And he was getting really frustrated because he's on telling the same things over and over. They're not listening is what he said. And quite quickly talking to manage to identify the problem. It's a problem I've seen loads of chiropractors make. It's one I used to make all the time as well. And essentially we're trying to do too much too soon. So many of us think that the time to educate the patient is at the start of care and we're worried that if we don't do enough education, they won't come back. You remember the Elephant and the Rider video from last week? We think that we've got to talk to the rider at the top and the analytical part of the brain. And we think if we don't do that soon, the rider's going to go, I don't need to come back, I'm going to go away. And what that leads to is complete overwhelm of our patients. Really what we need to be doing is thinking of the minimum effective dose of education. What is the bare minimum this person needs to know right now to help them make the choices that are going to get them long term to the best possible outcome where they really want to be. And this is something that really comes up in traditional chiropractic. DD wrote about the five principles of chiropractic. One of them is conservatism. Do as little as possible to get the results that you needed. Don't go and do five things where one would do. And this is something that means the same thing when it comes to education. So I want to be clear here. I'm not anti education. Often when I say this, people misinterpret what I'm saying or they misunderstand and they think I'm saying, don't bother educating your patients. Believe me, that's not true. I am a big, big proponent of patient education and I would feel bad if my patients left my office not knowing anything more about the problem when they came in. I do not want patients being disempowered, coming in and going, I don't know what's going on. Chris just fixes me. You know, some will want to do that, but I would prefer to encourage the other way where we can. But it's really important not to overwhelm them. And particularly if you think about your report of findings. I have seen reports of findings that are half an hour lessons of the chiropractor talking and talking and talking. Now, hopefully, it seems like that kind of thing is dying out. Hopefully that's not you. And you're not playing videos for them as well on their first visit, because trust me, that stuff doesn't work. It does not go in. But hopefully you're not doing that. But still look at your report of findings and think, how much am I sharing right now that they need to know right now? Because on average, the research is quite clear. Patients will remember something between 60 and 90 seconds of what you say to them per visit. That's about it. Now, if you just give them a minute's worth of education, that means they're probably going to remember pretty much all of what you said. Not all, because some stuff gets lost, but most of it. If you talk to them for 10 minutes, they're going to remember 10 to 15% of what you said. And the problem is, it will be a random 10 to 15% and you don't have a lot of control. You can maybe get one or two bits if you go, this is really important if there's one thing you take away from today, but if you're talking to them for 10 minutes, there's about 50 things you want them to take away and they won't. They'll grab a few random ones and then what will happen is they'll go, how does this make sense? And they'll try to tie them together and stitch them together in their own way and they'll fill in the gaps. And this is when you get patients who go, oh, yeah, well, you said, da, da, da, da, da. And you're thinking, no, I didn't say that at all. And you'll react just like that. Chiropractor I'm working with will go, they're not listening. No, they were listening. You just overwhelmed them. So it's really important we don't do too much. Just like with drugs, if somebody goes to a GP for blood pressure medication, they're not going to give them the strongest possible dose of the strongest possible drug and then wind it down until the side effects go away. They're going to start logo. Let's start with the minimum and then let's see how you're doing, come back and then we'll build from there and we'll build it up until we find the smallest amount of that drug that we need to actually get the result that we're after. It's exactly the same with our education. So don't think that this is just down to, you've got to pour all the education in at the start or you'll miss your chance. If you build rapport with them, if you can connect with them and show them that you're somebody they can trust, they will be open to coming back. They absolutely will. And if you work out what it is they need to know now versus what it is they maybe need to know later, you can let them know later on. I'm going to teach you this or I'm going to show you that or I'm going to help you get xyz. But right now what you need is this. So the one thing I want you to focus on at home is, is X, whatever the care is, don't give them 50 things to do, don't give them an exercise routine that's 30 minutes long to start. You're overwhelmed and they'll do nothing. It's far better. They do 60 seconds, they do nothing. So have a think about that. If you're finding a lot of patients aren't taking your education on board, don't think about what else do I need to say? Look at what you can cut. Try and give the bare minimum that they need right now to get them where they want to be and then you can bring more in overtime. It's much more effective, trust me. And, and patients actually end up leaving with a lot more education than they would have if you tried to front load it. So give that a try. As always, if you need any help with that, reach out, ask me questions, that's absolutely fine. You can find my course, the Happy Patient Project, online as well. Patientcentre.co.uk HPP One of the key concepts in that is this idea of not frontloading education. And I show you step by step how to deliver an ethical education, elegant reporter findings that goes through what they need but doesn't go through the things they don't need right now and how to foreshadow that and bring that in later on. So I'm here if you need some help, as always. Any questions, shoot me an email. Otherwise, we'll catch up soon. Take care.
