3 Questions That Create Compliant Patients In Your Practice

Patients retain about 5% of what we say during their first office visit.Simple explanations, visual aids, exercise demonstrations, and video reinforcement help convey your message, so your information is not lost in translation.  Eliminate patient confusion with this three-step process. Busy chiropractors often assume patients retain more information about their condition.

However, a recent study found that chiropractors may have an opinion about their patient education that is inconsistent with reality.

97% of chiropractors believe that their patients may experience mild side effects to manipulation like sore muscles, headaches, or increased pain.  However, only 27% percent of chiropractic patients perceived the chiropractor as doing anything to mitigate these side effects via treatment or educational resources. (1)

Don't let miscommunication affect your clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. Allow your patient to teach YOU about what they learned within your office.

After each office visit, ask the patient to do three things:

1. Verbally repeat their diagnosis.

2. Explain what they should expect and what they need to do before their next visit.

3. Demonstrate the exercises and ADLs that will accelerate healing.

Taking those three simple actions helps you to:

1. Place the patient in the driver's seat of their recovery,

2. Boost outcomes, and

3. Limit drop-outs.

It doesn't sound like much, but these simple steps allow the patient to share in their recovery responsibility, and an educated patient is a compliant patient.

ChiroUp subscribers can take this a step further by prescribing condition reports for every new clinical presentation.

These reports allow your patients to understand their condition, and then provide multiple ways that they can be active in their recovery at-home with video demonstrations of their prescribed exercises & ADLs.

Here’s what one subscriber had to say about these reports:

“A must-have for any evidence-based chiropractor. Being able to give my patients a write-up of their condition and provide them with videos/written instructions of home exercises is a game-changer.

Every treatment recommendation and condition report is supported through good, peer-reviewed RCT and Systematic Reviews, not anecdotal case reports or pilot studies. ChiroUp is a must for any clinic that values patient education.”

If you are not yet a subscriber, you can check out ChiroUp’s full access for free in our 14-day trial. (no credit card required.) Learn more about that here.

• References

  Funabashi M, Pohlman KA, Goldsworthy R, Lee A, Tibbles A, Mior S, Kawchuk G. Beliefs, perceptions and practices of chiropractors and patients about mitigation strategies for benign adverse events after spinal manipulation therapy. Link