Realistic Expectations
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some of the most common misconceptions new patients have about chiropractic care, and how do you help address them early on?
A common misconception about chiropractic care is that one visit will fix everything. Chiropractic care works like exercise or physical therapy. It takes multiple visits to get results.
When setting a treatment plan, how do you balance a patient’s goals with what you know is clinically realistic?
A treatment plan must take into account the patients goals and what the chiropractor believes to be a realistic clinical outcome. This is why it is so important to review the X-rays and clinical history with the patient.
Can you share an example of a patient who saw unexpected improvements early on and how that impacted their overall treatment journey?
One patient on her first visit had immediate relief from years of headaches. I explained the need for ongoing care. While she listened to my recommendations, I did not see her after that for quite some time. When she returned, the headaches were back. I explained the original care plan again and why it is so important. After hearing it the second time she decided to commit to the care plan. Sometimes people just need to hear the care plan a couple different times in order to make that decision.
For patients who might feel discouraged by a longer recovery timeline, how do you help keep them motivated and engaged in their care?
It is important to check in regularly with the patients during their care plan. It is normal to have some ups and downs throughout the early stages of a chiropractic care plan, but don’t give up hope. Healing takes time and it is important to stay the course.
Realistic Expectations
Hello everyone, this is Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place and today I wanted to talk about something that we like to do with our patients, especially when they're brand new to the office. After we go over our findings in after doing x-rays, examination, doing a detailed history and consultation with the patient, it's really important to set realistic expectations. Everybody is different, we're all at different ages, we've had different traumas, different injuries to the body, we have different athletic abilities, so it's very important that after we look at everything with our patient to set those realistic expectations so that they have an understanding of what we're expecting to happen and they can share what they're hoping to get out of chiropractic care as well.
A lot of the times we like to make sure we're giving a comfortable amount of time and visits to get to that goal for that patient and a lot of times some people will come into chiropractic office thinking one visit is gonna like magically get everything back where it needs to be and it'll just stay there. Well, typically that's not the case. Somebody that's really young, in really good shape, takes good care of themselves, maybe they can get a couple of visits and really see massive change, but most people it's going to take a little bit of time.
Don't get me wrong, we see changes happening early with patients, changes that they get excited about, many of them see that they're sleeping better, there's less pain, less dysfunction, maybe they're able to squat down and lift something a little easier, but we typically like to make sure that we let people know that if your spine has been in this pattern for long periods of time, if you haven't been adjusted in years or some patients never, they've never been to the chiropractor, that it will take some time to make those changes that we're looking for in the body and by setting realistic expectations we're telling our patients that hey, you know, we see this on x-ray, we see these issues that are these underlying issues, but we're hoping to say get you maybe 50-60% better. Somebody who's been struggling with pain for years, that's a pretty huge improvement, so realistic expectations going to the chiropractor is a good thing to think about prior to coming in and it's definitely our job at our office to help educate you on what expectations to have based on what we're seeing. I'm Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place.
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2:00pm - 5:30pm
Closed Fridays and Weekends
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The Chiropractic Place
1123 Hilltop Drive
Redding CA, 96003