When Patients Want to Switch Practitioner

What do you do when you're covering for a colleague and their patients want to stay with you? Now, if you ever work with other practitioners, this is something that's going to happen at some point. And this very question came up in a group that I'm in recently. Practitioner in there. They were covering for a colleague. They were on holiday for a couple of weeks and they had a situation where a couple of patients had said, oh, can I come back and see you next time? And they didn't quite know how to handle it. They didn't know what they should do, what they should say to the patient. This was a decent person. They didn't want to, you know, upset their colleagues, they didn't want to do anything unethical. And they were asking for advice. And the advice that they got was pretty good advice, but it fell in for, like, one of two camps. One was saying, you know, basically, oh, just explain to them politely that you can't. It wouldn't be professional that you're going to be handing back to the other practitioner, you know, really trying to encourage the patient to say, like, no, not really. You should stick with this other person. And that way you're showing your colleague that you're being professional and ethical. The other camp was saying, like, what does it matter? Like the other, they shouldn't be so worried about this. Chiropractor shouldn't have such a scarcity mindset. Nobody owns the patient. You should be able to see them. You know, the other practice shouldn't worry about it. So there's a lot of talk here about, like, how they should handle the relationship with their colleague. And that is a valid thing to do. What I didn't hear was a lot of discussion about the patient's experience in this, and that's what I wanted to talk about today in terms of how to address it with your colleague. Really, the best thing to do is have that discussion before they go away. Ask them and say, look, if this happens, and it probably will, because patients will always end up preferring one person over another and sometimes that'll be the new one. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to handle it? So that discussion, I think, is always worth doing. I have that with every incoming associate. We've just got two new associates joining our practice at the moment. And I sit down and say to both of them, this is how we deal with this. This is how we approach it. It's much easier to do that way. But I wanted to talk more about the patient experience because that's actually quite an important thing. What a lot of us don't realize is that if a patient asks that, they're probably quite nervous. The majority of patients are a little bit unsure. Now we set the tone and we set the expectation that unless they bring it up, they'll be going back to see the original practitioner. They're often already booked in for their follow up visit after the locum one, after the COVID backing with them anyway. So we set things up so patients know what to expect. They don't have to worry about, oh, who should I see next time? Because sometimes they think you covering once when you say, you know, book back in a couple of weeks, they're going out, going, did they meet with them, the original one, are they back yet? They don't quite know what to do. And we want to avoid any uncertainty, any hesitation, any element of them feeling unsure because that creates anxiety, that creates a little bit of stress for them and that's not helpful for what we're trying to, you know, achieve in that therapeutic relationship. But you've got to understand that when a patient asks this, they probably overcome a little bit of internal friction, some more than others. But most patients will generally be a little bit worried asking, so be a little bit nervous. They'll be worried about offending you or potentially your colleague. So the way that I address this is that we set things up so that it seems like the expectations, they go back to the colleague. That's what we'd expect. That's generally what's best for most of them. However, if they ask, I don't try and encourage them to do that because they've already, by asking, told me that's not what they prefer. If that's what they prefer, they'd have gone back and done that. We'd have made that very easy. So the way I dress is I say to them, look, it's completely up to you who you see. If you would rather transfer your care to me, that's absolutely fine. The thing that's important is that we recommend you tend to stick with one practitioner over time so this other practitioner knows you more. We generally transfer you back. If you want to change to me, that's fine. It's just important that you don't hop too much because you don't get the same continuity of care. It's not as good for your results. So basically I'm letting the patient know it's absolutely fine to switch, but as long as they don't keep switching back and forth because that's just not great for care generally. But I'll also say to them, you know, in terms of who you want to see, it's completely up to you. It's absolutely fine if you want to. Nobody's going to be offended, nobody's going to be upset, you know, with. This always happens. Some patients will switch because certain days and shifts are better for them. Sometimes they just prefer a certain style of treatment. So some of my patients, when they've seen whatever the practitioner is recovering, have ended up preferring them to stay with them. So it's fine. Patients do often switch. As long as it's not back and forth a lot, it's absolutely fine. And I want you to know that Dr. So and so is not going to be offended by this. You won't hurt anybody's feelings because that's often an anxiety, whether they bring that up to you or not. They will often then worry about, oh, is it awkward next time I come reception, the old chiropractor was there. That awkwardness can associate a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety with coming to our practice, which is very, very counterproductive. So that's what we want to avoid. So if you're ever in this situation, yes, you want to have a discussion, you want to be very clear on policies and procedures and how you handle that as a team. So your colleague knows exactly what would be said in certain situations. That's all good to do. Beyond that, if somebody asks, my number one priority is to make sure they're reassured that they know that no one is judging them, no one is getting upset, no one is being hurt. If they decide to do that, because they already have to overcome a bit of a hurdle to even share that with you, they're often a bit worried about what the response will be, some more than others, some won't care so much. But it's important to come from that default perspective of thinking, what's the patient experiencing right now? Them asking this, is this something that's worrying? Is this stressing them? And do I need to focus more on reassuring them and then handling whatever needs to happen, whatever conversations to happen with my colleague later on. So thought I'd share that with you. It may not be relevant for absolutely everybody, but it's something that comes up a lot in our practice and seeing each other. And just remember, think about what the patient's needs are first. That is patient centered, after all. And then whatever the conversation needs to happen, the rest of the team, that can happen afterwards. So hope that was helpful with you. Sorry, I know I didn't get a written email out last week. We finally got back into the house after 363 days. It was under a year, which was arbitrary but very important to me. But essentially we were still moving loads of stuff back and forth there. So apologies for that. Realize I messed up. There will be something going out this Thursday for you, I promise. We're in the house, we're back in routine and things are going back to normal. So keep an eye out for that on Thursday. Lastly, for any of you in the uk, there are still some places available for my seminar next month if you go to patientcentre.co.uk2023 seminar. We're going to be covering adjusting skills but also patient management. This is the first public life center I've done in four years. I don't know if we're going to repeat it. And it's me and Owen Evans together, so it's going to be great fun. Really looking forward to it. And if you'd like to, you'd like to join us or you'd like to send an associate, it is ideal for helping the associate hit the ground running. Then there are still some places left. You can go that website there or just reply, shoot me a message and I'll send you the link. That's no problem. So hope that's helpful and I'll see you soon for another video. Take care, guys.