Now that the month of January is complete, we've gotten our feet officially wet at the CIC and the Burnside Clinic with patient care. Some of the interns at the CIC are rocking it mysteriously and some are getting visits slowly and wondering what they are doing wrong. I am somewhere in the middle. Overall, the first month of patient care has gone very well and I have learned a lot.
Patient care is tricky. It is a real balance between entertainment and being a professional. You have to be on your game the entire time or the patient begins thinking you are not giving them their moneys worth. Customer satisfaction is quite important when treating each patient, because happy patients follow treatment plans more closely. If they follow treatment plans, they continue as active patients. It is really a win-win scenario for both the patient and the intern.
Lately, I have seen a real slow in the number of visits I am obtaining weekly. It is so significant that I have begun putting time into analyzing why this is happening. I have been going through my patient files to remember how the interaction went between the patient and myself with hopes of finding a reason for this slump. The largest factor that I have found is that I have been treating patients and failing to speak to them about their treatment plan and the steps I have outlined for them to follow. It has been this way for the past few weeks and of course, my visits have fallen. Eventually, I will have to get over this hump by taking time every visit to show the patient where they are at in their plan. This does work when I remember to do it. Sometimes I get so into treating the condition that I forget about the plan and the patient doesn't come in for 4 weeks.
It is interesting to work with the public like this. The experiences teach you a lot about yourself and how people think. It is challenging being a student in an environment like this. We try very hard to look like doctors but we are constantly challenged by the attending physician in front of patients. This makes us look like amateurs and the patient judges us in that manner. How do you bounce back after such instances occur? Keeping the chin up and a smile on ones face helps.
One patient told me the other day that they come to the CIC because they feel as if they are getting the most up-to-date chiropractic care available. It was an interesting exchange of thoughts. I kept my thoughts mostly to myself in that regard and reaffirmed the patient's comment with a smile and a nod of the knoggen.
Chiropractic is such an art and is formed from many years of hands-on treatment. When a patient comes into the clinic in pain, this pain they are experiencing is their reality and a story is wrapped up into the injury. It's part of their life and the event becomes a part of their life story. I find that very fascinating when interviewing patients. Many times they define certain events in their lives by the injuries they have suffered or surgeries they have had. Coming into the clinic is another big deal for them which marks yet another story in their life. This is why we must be entertainers to some extent. Their story must be very important to us when we work with them and we must find ways to get them to take action in order to get better as well as offer drugless, natural and effective treatments. Hence, my new commitment to sharing my treatment plans with my patients each visit.
Dr. Roberts gives little speeches every Saturday and Thursday morning at the clinic and I find them inspiring every once and a while. Someday's I cannot stand the demeaning tone in her voice but others, I start the day inspired. I guess we all have our bad days. The speech this weekend was about how neurosurgery is failing back pain sufferers. The evidence is in that suggests this invasive, popular approach to back pain relief is a poor choice. I find this very interesting because the solution which is stated in the current Back Letter (a publication), was to focus treatment on less invasive "alternative" treatments.
She extended this information into why some patients have more pain than others. Why some patients who have severe degeneration in their spine and joints have no pain at all and why some with the same level of degeneration have severe debilitating pain is a complex phenomenon. She spoke of the work of a popular researcher who looked into this phenomenon and apparently he found correlations to the diet as well as the level of one's exercise to one's propensity to become excessively inflamed or heightened pain sufferers. I find this so very cool! This concept is definitely known to most health professionals but the system is not set up to fix the patient's real problem.
The real problem is their lifestyle. It is keeping them at a constantly inflamed state and any insult or injury, whether mild or severe, causes excessive reactions that result in a large pain response. Inflammatory precursors are well-studied and anti-inflammatory precursors are well-studied as well. NSAIDs work off this anti-inflammatory biochemical pathway and so do many fruits, vegetables and unsaturated fatty acids. If a person can infiltrate their system with anti-inflammatory precursors while eliminating inflammatory ones (saturated fats, sugars etc.), they will theoretical experience less pain in life and perhaps less disease.
All for now
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