Why Your Patient's Don't Listen

Why do patients pay for our advice and then not follow it? And then they keep making the same mistakes and then they get frustrated that they're getting the same results, even though we've told them probably time and time again not to do that and to do something else instead. Now, let's be honest, this is a generally a frustrating topic at times. And if you've been in practice for any length of time whatsoever, you've asked yourself this question. I know I have sometimes on a daily basis and earlier in my career. But putting aside the answers to those questions for a moment, what I want to invite you to think about is that the answers that you give as a practitioner tell me a lot about how you approach patient care. And not only how you approach patient care, but how likely you are to be enjoying your job in another five years time. Because what I found is there's two types of practitioners in this regard. There's what I call the idealists and the realists. Now the idealist, this is most practitioners, and it used to be me as well. And the idealists generally think that if I can just find a way to get the patient to understand this, to take on board this concept, to realize the mistake they're making, if I can get them to see that I can get this knowledge from my head into theirs, they will change. They will stop making that mistake, they will change their behavior and they'll do the thing that makes sense. Basically, what you're falling into is the fallacy of if they know what I knew, they do what I would do. And we assume that people take the same knowledge and act on that, that same knowledge in the same way. It's actually totally untrue. But not only is it untrue, it actually can become damaging to the therapeutic relationship. Because when you do that and it doesn't work, you get frustrated. And the idealists tend to put that frustration somewhere within the patient. They tend to say something like, well, they just. People just don't really want to get better. People don't really value their health. People don't really respect chiropractic. They sort of go, basically, I've given information, they haven't acted on it. That must mean they don't want it, they don't really want to get better. How many times have we heard that from practitioners and sometimes ourselves? So those are the idealists. And what I found is the idealists over time tend to fall out of love with what they do. They may put up with it for months, maybe even years, but over time, practice becomes a fair bit less fulfilling. And the best case scenario is they can, they can have a busy practice if they work really hard and they're a great communicator. But they'll generally go, yeah, some patients, they're my cup of tea, others they're just not. The ones who are will fill my schedule. The ones who aren't, well, they'll go somewhere else. And they just filter the patients that stick around to this select few who do what they would do. And often I find over time that they'll build a practice, they may even build a clinic and take an associates. A lot of them seem to develop a property portfolio in midlife. That's just the novelty because practice just becomes pretty routine and it just becomes a little bit dull for them. Now that's group one and that's most people. That's the path most of us are on, if I'm honest. Group two are the realists. And the realists approach this very, very differently. The realists understand a few different things about people. They understand that patients may have different values and certainly different priorities to their own and that when they receive the information, they filter that through their values and priorities and then decide how to act. And the many patients will have a different filter to you. So. So they're not going to do the same thing with the same information. Not only that, they understand that patients priorities change over time. When somebody is really struggling with pain that's keeping them up at night and they can't sleep. They have very different priorities to somebody who's feeling better, getting back to their normal life now and doesn't have that same pain. And most importantly, they understand that people change and patients change over time. Their identity is not a static fix. They and that they may have a different version of that patient turning up each and every visit. And the version of them showing up to the clinic may not be the version of them who's going home or who's going to work or who's going to the gym or doing whatever they're doing. They understand that these people change. This is a concept. You can boil it down to what's called unconditional positive regard. This is a concept coined by Carl Rogers, who's many of you all know, a big hero of mine, develop person centered theory. But basically the precursor to patient centered care. He's the grandfather of it in a way. And this idea of unconditional positive regard was basically trying to approach patients by understanding that they're probably doing the best they can in the moment with the tools that they have, maybe they're not doing well, but maybe that's because they're having a lot of stress at home. You know, maybe they're going through a difficult period in their marriage. Maybe they've got a child who's sick. Maybe they're like worried about losing their job. Maybe they're really struggling with, know, some big problem there. There's a reason why they're not really showing up at their absolute best. And understanding and accepting that is just being a realist. And when you do that, your job shifts from being trying to change this person to just working with what you've got. And I felt this shift over time from an idealist to a realist for me has made practice so much more fulfilling, so much more rewarding. And I don't have difficult patience anymore. I'll have some difficult conversations, sure, but. But I don't have difficult patients. They don't seem to come and see me anymore. And I've seen this again with many, many practitioners over time that the realists tend to be the ones who love practice. 10, 20, 30, 40 years in from now. Now, if you're sitting there worried that you might be an idealist, don't worry, because the realists believe, and I believe and all the people who study this believe that people can change, you can change from being an idealist to a realist. And I've seen this happen many, many times when with my members of people who've done my courses, I can remember one, in fact, who's been in practice a fair bit longer than I have, a fair bit more successful than I was at that stage there, who said, oh, thank you so much. I've fallen back in love with chiropractic again. Beforehand, I was kind of losing the spark because they were stuck in this idealist frame of mind. When they became a realist. Instead of feeling like you're just going to lower your expectations, they fell back in love with it. They're really passionate about what they do. And that's something that is achievable for all of us. So. So if that's you, if you are an idealist, don't worry. I would really encourage you. Just look up the concept, unconditional positive regard. Have a look at that, do a little bit of reading and see how you can start to maybe shift your thinking, apply that in your own life. There's a reason why I make this one of the fundamental concepts in the Happy Patient project. Why it's one of the core things that certified patient centered practitioners have to work through as part of a certification program. Speaking of which, the deadline for the Fast track, remember this is only for experienced practitioners is the Thursday. So if you do want to apply, Thursday evening is your absolute deadline. If you're not that experienced or you're not very confident with your communication, you can join the tribe. You can do that. It's a self paced study option as well. This is just one of many, many concepts that you'll learn, but I'd really encourage you to look up unconditional positive regard. The really cool thing though is we can apply this concept from Carl Rogers work to something from a completely different model that gets us even better results and actually allows us to really dive in and understand what's going on in this patient's mind. And we can actually then start to predict how they respond to different types of information. Means we can actually be proactive, rather reactive. So I'll share that with you tomorrow. Keep an eye out for that. It's really, really cool extra model we can apply to this. Otherwise, like I said, if you do want to get certified, become a certified patient centered practitioner. You want some help? Join the tribe, join the Fast Track. I'll put the links down below and I'll see you tomorrow for another video with something we can really supercharge this with. So I'll see you there.