Many practices front-load their patient education, leaning into it during the first visit or two.

The near perfect follow through, makes it tempting to think your message landed and connected.

Until patients ghost you on their 10th visit.

What did you neglect to say? What did you forget to do?

That’s easy. Reread the first sentence above.

You talked. They listened. They thoughtfully nodded at just the right times.

It’s called the “patient head fake.”

Patients were able to mislead you into thinking that they had exchanged their lifetime of symptom treating, in favor of embracing your rational, common-sense explanation of chiropractic principles.

While presented earnestly, even passionately, you did so before you were valid for the reason that brought them to your practice.

Outside-inning the patient with words may be gratifying, and even serve as an affirming reminder for you, but rarely effective at changing a patient’s governing beliefs.

The “one and done” approach to patient education, especially when it comes to the deeply ingrained values and beliefs surrounding health, rarely produce lasting change.

There are several issues in play here.

The first is the notion that yakking at a patient is actually education. Or produces change. Which I’ve addressed many times before, particularly here and here.

But there’s another issue and it’s related to losing track of the patient’s experience. It comes from the way many practices think of patient visits.

Apparently there are two types of visits. The first might be considered “unusual” visits. Visits that involve the consultation, a report of findings, a progress exam—that sort of thing.

The other is the “usual” visit. Routine adjustments and any other adjunctive procedure you might employ on a typical visit. It’s the stuff of the weekly visits statistics that most practices keep.

This is where the problem often emerges. Because on a typical practice day your routine visits might include patients who are on their 23rd visit, 9th visit, 110th visit or their fourth visit.

Many of these visits are tracked merely by the resolution of their symptoms. But rarely through the lens of the patient’s experience and how they might be (or not) integrating chiropractic principles into their belief system.

This is why you might consider creating a visit-denominated patient education curriculum.

In other words, metering out your patient education material based on the patient’s evolving experience, tied to their visit number.

Here’s a suggested curriculum to get you thinking:

Visit 1 – Your consultation, exam and usual onboarding process.
Visit 2 – The report of findings and their first adjustment.
Visit 3 – The adjustment. What is it doing? It’s not treating your symptom.
Visit 4 – Get well faster – This is a partnership. Here’s what you can do.
Visit 5 – Healing takes time and happens between visits, not on the table.
Visit 6 – The big idea and the supremacy of the nervous system.
Visit 7 – Little germ, big fear. Explain the folly of the germ theory.
Visit 8 – Stress: the cause of the cause and the three types.
Visit 9 – The meaning of pain. Pain is a language used by their body.
Visit 10 – When you’re feeling better. The distinction of a diet versus a lifestyle.
Visit 11 – Chiropractic for life. The five ways patients can use chiropractic care.
Visit 12 – How to get that special feeling: by referring others.

Like adjustments, with each visit building on the ones before, having a curriculum, at least for a new patient’s first dozen visits, holds greater promise than drinking from your fire hose at the report of findings.

Granted, keeping track of each patient’s visit requires more discipline. It just depends upon how serious you are about adjusting the superior portion of their nervous system.

But there’s something even more insidious in play: the tendency to tire too easily.

If you have any hope of changing a patient’s belief, you’ll want to use the orthodontia approach: persistent pressure.

In other words, you’ll need to tell the chiropractic-nervous-system-focused story over and over and over and over. And when you tire of doing so, tell it again and again and again.

Besides getting really good at telling the story, just maybe, they’ll have that ah-ha moment and the penny will drop.

The notion of telling the chiropractic story once, at the beginning of their care, somehow fulfills your obligation to “educate” the patient, is mostly a hallucination. And thinking you can successfully convince them of the value of nonsymptomatic wellness care before you’ve shown the capacity to help them with their presenting complaint is equally unlikely of success.

Don’t be misled by the patient head fake. Be curious. Ask questions. Uncover each patient’s point of view.

Adjust their cerebral cortex, and their spine is sure to follow.

Bill Esteb, a passionate chiropractic advocate since 1981, brings a fresh perspective to the profession as Patient Media’s creative director and co-founder of Perfect Patients. With 12 insightful books examining the doctor-patient relationship, he inspires chiropractors worldwide as a chiropractic speaker, through his chiropractor coaching program, and consulting. Since 1999 Monday Morning Motivation has been emailed weekly to over 10,000 subscribers, sparking breakthroughs across the chiropractic community.

Email Bill