Are You the Guide or the Hero of Your Practice? Why Your Chiropractic Patient Should Be the Hero
One of the most important modifications you can make in your chiropractic practice is understanding that you are not the hero of your patient's story. Your patient is.
You are the doctor. You bring the education, clinical knowledge and experience. You know what you found during the examination and, when the patient is a good candidate for care, you know how you can help. But that does not make you the hero. Your role is to be the guide.
Think about almost any great story. The hero has a problem. They know something needs to change, but they do not necessarily know how to get where they want to go. Then they meet a guide who understands the problem, has experience navigating it and can show them the path forward.
That is exactly how I believe we should approach the relationship with our patients.
Your patient's journey has already started before they ever walk through your door. Something hurts. They cannot do something they want to do. They are worried about their health, or perhaps they have already tried other things without getting the results they hoped for.
Eventually, they find you. Maybe it is through Google, social media, community outreach or because someone they trust says, "You need to go see my chiropractor."
The hero has found the guide. What happens next matters.
When you:
Guide the patient to understand what should normally be happening in the body
Help them understand what it looks like when a body is not functioning properly
Teach them how that relates to their particular concern
Finally help them understand how you can help, keeping it short, directed and concise;
Only then does the treatment plan become the logical next step.
At the end of a good report of findings, your patient should be thinking, "I understand what is going on. This doctor understands me. I understand how they can help me, and the treatment plan makes sense."
That feels very different from being sold a package of chiropractic visits.
You have not pressured the patient into care. You have guided them through the information in an order that allows them to understand their problem, understand your recommendation and make an informed decision about what they want to do next. In my experience, this lands over 95% of the time.
Your Role as the Guide Continues Throughout Care
Your job as the guide does not end when the patient accepts your recommendations.
Think again about the guide in a great story. When the hero starts to lose direction or gets off track, the guide reappears to provide perspective and help them move forward.
We need to do the same thing with our patients.
We should not present a treatment plan and then spend the next twelve visits adjusting the patient without continuing the conversation. We need to communicate throughout care. How are they progressing? What has changed? Why are we doing what we are doing? What is the next goal? Where are we headed?
Sometimes a patient needs encouragement. Sometimes they need clarification. Sometimes they need to be reminded of where they started and why following through matters.
That is all part of being their guide.
The patient remains the hero.
The business side of chiropractic can feel overwhelming when nobody ever taught us how to do it.
But these are skills that can absolutely be learned.
And you do not have to learn them the hard way alone.
About Dr. Cheryl van der Mark
Dr. Cheryl van der Mark is a chiropractor, entrepreneur, coach, and mother of five who has spent more than two decades building successful chiropractic practices while helping other chiropractors grow practices aligned with the life they truly want. Through ChiroLink Coaching, she helps women chiropractors bridge the gap between clinical skill and business success through mentorship, systems, strategy, and real world experience.
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