Why Most Chiropractors Aren't Patient-Centred

Foreign. I'm going to challenge a few people here. I think most practitioners are not as patient centered as they would like to think. In fact, I think the vast majority of us are practicing in what I would call patient centered light mode, which is not that different to just being nice. Now, I realize this is going to challenge a few people here. If you stick with me to the end of this video, I'll explain why. I've also got a very big announcement for something coming very soon that I'm sure you're going to want to be a part of there. But first of all, what do I mean by this, this patient centered light? Well, I can tell you, having been coaching practitioners for many years in these skills, in this approach, most people actually go on a journey very, very similar to me, which is where they thought they were patient centered. And if you don't go, oh no, I'm patient centered, that stuff's great. Brilliant. Yeah, other people really need that. But then when you actually dig below the surface, you find out they don't know as much as they think. And the reason for that is, is what's known as the Dunning Kruger effect. Now, if you're not aware, some people would have heard of this, but if you're not, the Dunning Kruger effect is basically what happens when you start to learn a little bit about something. Now, if we chart this, you'll see what I mean. If you imagine a line down here on the Y axis, this is your confidence. This is how much you think you know. And then along the bottom is knowledge, which is how much you actually know. And to start with, we all start down here. This is whether you're being a patient centered practitioner. This is whether you're learning a new skill, learning how to cook, whatever it might be. You start off down here. What doctors Dunning and Kruger, I don't know if they're doctors, but Mr. Dunning, Mr. Kruger, whoever they were, found was that when you learn a little bit about something, your confidence goes up very quickly. So you start learning and you go, oh, okay, hey, I know a lot about this. And very quickly you kind of get into this expert level of confidence, even though your knowledge is quite low. And we all saw this over the pandemic, right? Everybody was an expert, everybody into that suddenly knew what we should be doing, what was going on. I'm not going to dig into that any further. We don't talk about it anymore. But you see this on social media a lot. People know a little bit about something, acting like they know everything. And this was my experience when I certainly when I was at uni, I heard about this patient center thing for, oh, I haven't heard about that. I don't know anything about it. As I learned a little bit about it, I went, oh, yeah, that's me. I'm not money motivated. I'm not making patients do what I want them to do. I'm not, you know, selling them on a specific plan. I'm going to be nice, I'm going to be ethical. So I learned a little bit about it and I went, yep, that's what I'm going to do. I reckon I've got this. And then I practiced that way for a little while. What I learned over time as I started to dive more into it, especially looking outside of chiropractic, looking at other professions, was that, hang on a minute, this patient centered thing is actually a lot more complicated and a lot more challenging and difficult than I imagined. And so this took me into the next phase. So as you learn more, what then actually happens is your confidence comes down, you go, whoa, hang on a minute. This is harder than I thought. Maybe I don't know as much as I think you start to doubt yourself a lot more. And then over time, as you continue to learn, then the confidence comes back up, but it generally doesn't reach this point here. It's always a little bit lower. And that was my journey. Well, this is way more complicated. There's many more skills involved. Empathy is not just being nice and liking your patients. Things like unconditional positive regard require continuous practice. My difficult patients were often just down to patients that I wasn't relating to in the same way. And as I learned that, then my confidence started to grow again, but it didn't quite get up here. Now the reason I'm drawing this chart is because in my experience, most of us get stuck here because this is a really nice place to stop. It doesn't require a lot of effort to get there. You basically just tell yourself you're a good person and, you know, you learn how to not manipulate people. Like that's particularly challenging. And you go, oh, I'm better than all those people down there. All those people who aren't doing it. Yeah, they're the problem with the profession. I would say the vast majority of chiropractors I meet are here now. I work with a lot of new graduates who are great because they're down here and they know they're down here, which is brilliant because they're really open. These people are very closed off to learning because they think they've done it. And the suggestion that they have more to learn would be to knock their confidence. And I can tell you, going down here, this bit isn't fun because you start unlearning stuff and you're going, oh, hang on, maybe I got things wrong. So there's a good chunk of practitioners who are up there now. Why am I talking about this today? I'm talking about this today because this has been a problem I've been struggling with for quite a while when it comes to being an educator. Because people down here are great like I am, all for working with them. They're really good fun because they know. They don't know a lot. People over here are great because they've realized, oh, this is quite complex. I'd like to really learn more, really master this stuff. It's very hard to reach people up here, people out there generally, because they think they know all, they think they're at the end, they're not open to learning more. And something I've been working on for a while that I wanted to try and use to combat this is almost ready. I'm going to be launching this within the next few weeks. This is a certification program for patient centered practitioners. Literally. It's called the Certified Patient Centered Practitioner program. I've had to wait on a few things. Mainly I wanted to make sure I got this right. I really thought about how to structure this. Really worked out what's going to work, what creates lasting change. Also I wanted to make sure it's registered. So this is a trademark. That means something. It's not something other people just go and take and say, oh, I'm certified patient centered as well. But I'm getting very, very close to launches. This is a very, very different program to most of what you will have seen out there. This is not a watch a few videos, answers and multiple choice questions. This is something that is actually going to meet you where you're at and guide you to true expertise. Because we all know there's people out there who say, well, I've been in practice for XYZ number of years, I know all this stuff. For somebody who's been in practice for a while, they have a decent bit of knowledge, it's going to meet them there. For somebody who's a new graduate who is right back here, it's going to meet them there as well. It's actually going to give you a genuine and comprehensive journey that is both accessible and meaningful. No matter where you are in your career. And if you are further along, then you can fast track that. If you're at the beginning, it will take you through the basics there. So I'm really excited to be launching this very, very soon. There'll be more details coming in the next few weeks there, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this with you because there might be one or two people watching who are here and go, oh, hang on, maybe it's that me. And if I could reach just one of them, that would be great because this is the hardest bit to get over. The other thing to say is that if you know people who are up here have a little bit of understanding because we've all had to go through that journey and hopefully we all do progress past that as well. But I think that makes a little bit sense for you and I would challenge you to go. If you think you're patient centered and you think that's how you practice, I would sit down and write, what does being patient centered mean to me? Because if you think it's just not being about the money and you think it's just about liking your patients and you're not aware of things like unconditional positive regard, you're not aware of things like reflective therapeutic empathy, then I would do a little bit of research. There's a great book called Person Centered Theory by Carl Rogers. He was a psychologist and a counselor. Thoroughly recommend reading that because that book actually challenged a lot of what I thought about being patient centered wards. And it really helped me get from here to here. Once you're there, the learning tends to happen more easily. So have a little think and I'll be sharing some more details with you on that certified Patient Centered Practitioner program very, very soon. I'm really, really excited because there is nothing out there like this at all. I have done my research, I've looked around. No other program like that exists. So if that's something you think you'd like to get involved in, keep an eye out. I have more details coming really soon and I'll see you soon for another video.