Five Elements to Primary Care in Your Practice

After 19 years in practice, I have discovered 5 primary needs of our patients. In our world where being unhealthy, overweight or obese, and taking some kind of medication to control some symptom is “the norm”, patients do not have a resource for lifestyle education. As a chiropractor, you are the original lifestyle doctor! What ways can you advise your patients to move in the direction of health? Will this help you build credibility with your patients? Will this help build your practice?

Get adjusted

How often do you get adjusted? Just when you have pain? Is there a reason to adjust your patients when they do not have pain or objective findings (as long as insurance isn’t involved)? Okay, I know I just stepped on a lot of toes with those questions. But the answers will determine how you are educating your patients about the adjustments you are giving every day in your office. Personally, I would love to be adjusted once a week, pain or not. We all know the adjustments we give patients have further reaching effects than just relieving musculoskeletal pain and improving proprioception. What are you telling your patients?

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Eat Right

There is so much information out in the world about what to eat and when to eat it, the average patient is overwhelmed. We all know that most of our patients’ complaints are at least partially weight-related; we also know that the overweight patient is suffering from more inflammation than the normal weight patient. It is also overwhelming for most of us to sit down with our patients for the time it takes to really map out a healthy eating plan for patients. There is a solution. Find a colleague that specializes in functional medicine/nutrition or internal medicine. Have lunch with them and create a friendly arrangement of sharing patients. Let the DABCI or MS-ACP chiropractor do what they do best – focus on eating and lifestyle modification. Principled doctors don’t have to worry about losing patients to other doctors. Since it’s really about what is best for the patient, your patients will be so thrilled with the results; they will refer more of their family more often. I have seen, personally, how these arrangements can work brilliantly.

Drink Right

Okay, I’m writing this over the 4th of July weekend. Drinking right can have many connotations this weekend. This applies to patients too. Male patients consuming more than 2 alcohol-containing drinks per day, and female patients consuming more than one per day is considered excessive. Ask the questions – the acronym CAGE will help you remember.

C. Have you ever felt like you should Cut down your drinking? 
A. Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking? 
G. Have you felt bad or Guilty about your drinking?
E. Do you need an Eye-opener upon awakening to get rid of a hangover or steady your nerves? 

Additionally, most of our patients are dehydrated from coffee, iced tea, and caffeinated beverages. Use their weight as a guideline for daily ounces of water. Take their weight and divide by 2, this is the number of ounces of water they should consume in a day. Usually 2-3 qt./day for the average patient.

Move Right

When my patients are sedentary, I just want them to move their body. Fifteen minutes twice a day or thirty minutes daily is the minimum recommendation. If they are starting from scratch, walking the dog counts! As patients move more, sweating is the goal. I like 3-4mph as a goal for the average 30-50-year-old patient. Then encourage muscle building. Keep it simple. Light weights or bands for upper extremity and simple squats or lunges for the lower body. Sarcopenia or muscle wasting causes faster aging. Tell that to a female patient and she will be motivated to move her body in no time! 

The other part of Move Right is bowel movements. Patients having one or more bowel movements per day are healthy, anything less than that is an issue regardless of their medical doctor telling them that is “normal”.

Think Right

• Do you have patients that suck the life out of you?
• Do you bring your best self to the office?
• Do you allow external “life stuff” get in the way of being the best doctor you can be?

Your patients pay you to be the best. If there are attitude issues, change it!