Educated Owners, Healthy Animals
TECHNIQUE
The Benefits of Owner Education
William Ormston
DVMm CAC, DVETHOM
ANIMAL CHIROPRACTIC can be a profitable addition to the chiropractic clinic and a huge benefit to the health of the community, but only if the animal chiropractor invests their time to educate animal owners.
Educating owners will help them achieve better results and greater satisfaction. One of the often overlooked effects of owner education is the management of expectations. Make sure owners don’t see your three-times-a-week recommendations as “dosages,” like a prescription. Help them understand that your adjustments aren’t treating their animal’s pain. Make sure they accept the fact that the speed of their animal’s recovery reveals more about them than about you. In short, effective owner education improves owner satisfaction by setting appropriate expectations.
Educated owners will allow their animals to remain under care longer. They have a greater understanding of the relationship between physical, chemical, and emotional stress and their animal’s spine and nervous system. Thus, if health, hygiene, and prevention are among their higher values, they are more likely to adopt some type of ongoing supportive care beyond the relief of their animal’s current symptoms. Simply put, effective owner education can increase the likelihood that you will enjoy the predictable and stabilizing effect of a practice filled with asymptomatic routine rechecks.
The key is to care, but not care too much. As animal chiropractors, we have to be careful not to care more about the animal than the owner does.
Knowledgeable owners also become better referral ambassadors. Owners who understand chiropractic are more likely to notice opportunities where your care could benefit others. Moreover, educated owners are better able to make a compelling case for chiropractic care beyond saying, “It worked for me,” or, “She helped me with my animal’s behavioral changes.” In other words, educated owners have healthier and happier animals, and they have the experience, language, passion, and motivation to persuade others to try chiropractic care. Conversely, if you argue that animal owners should comply because you’re the doctor, you’re smarter, owners are stupid, it’s their moral obligation, etc., then you’ll be “rewarded” with frustration and the emptiness that comes with self-righteousness.
In the early days of human chiropractic, patient education was the cornerstone of the busiest, most successful practices. Patient lectures, health tracts, and other strategies were routinely part of providing effective orientation for new patients. Unfortunately, these and other patient-education overtures seem to have fallen out of favor, especially as the distinction between medical treatment and chiropractic care has become blurred.
We are in the early days of animal chiropractic. Seek and be excited about talking to local groups about it. Change the paradigm of the many owners that think animal chiropractors are merely spinal specialists, hamstrung by their inability to prescribe medications. Ask questions to challenge the belief that animal chiropractic is only for musculoskeletal issues.
Ask owners what they think a subluxation does. Naturally, most animal chiropractors believe that subluxations are the cause of a host of healthcare issues. However, upon closer inspection, subluxations are also symptoms. At its most fundamental, a subluxation involves bones and nerves. Being static structures, bones only move when muscles contract. Muscles contract based on commands from the nervous system. Thus, the vertebral displacement often used to ascertain the presence of subluxation is a neurological event.
What prompts the nervous system to command muscles to contract?
Most chiropractors agree that it is to accommodate physical, chemical, or (more commonly) emotional stress. If you’re really committed to addressing the cause, great. That will probably mean helping owners face their animal’s diet, exercise, nail or hoof trims, and the anxieties of modem life.
Are you up for it?
Educate owners by asking them to explain the following statement to you: “The power that made the body heals the body.”
There still isn’t a recorded instance of a doctor (of any discipline) healing a patient. The French writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire was quoted as saying, “The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient, while nature cures the disease.” In fact, truth be told, no one knows exactly how the body heals, but we do know that for healing to occur, at least two things must be present:
1. First, life must be present. Dead bodies do not heal, and young bodies tend to heal faster than older bodies. Once the spirit vacates the body, and it is no longer able to adapt to the environment, the healing potential is severely limited.
2. Second, connections must be present. End organs must be connected to the brain, and animals must be connected to their community (herd animals need to be in a herd, pack animals need a pack, etc.). Isolation, separation, and interference can hinder the healing process.
Be careful that you don’t inadvertently sanction an owner’s perception that adjustments heal the body. They don’t. Nor do the veterinarian’s pills or the surgeon’s knife. While many owners will give you the credit for the results that their animals experience, accepting that credit is a form of stealing from the way the body is made.
The “above-down, inside-out” chiropractic philosophy works even in the animal world. It holds up regardless of your brand of chiropractic. You get to choose how high the “above” is. If you’re a mechanist, then the hardwired nervous system is merely what connects the end organs with the CPU of the brain. If your outlook includes the metaphysical, then the “above” becomes God. Either way, it works.
When B. J. Palmer crafted this “chiro-ism,” he used it to help distinguish between the underlying assumptions separating chiropractic from medicine. The use of drugs is clearly “outside-in, below-up.” Changing blood chemistry to hijack the body and subdue symptoms may be expedient, and in certain situations, even lifesaving. However, it’s rarely a healthy long-term solution, and it often reveals a profound mistrust of the wisdom of the body. Notice that the chiropractor isn’t the hero in the concise four-word “above-in, inside-out” slogan. However, God and chiropractors’ God-given ability to heal from the inside out are. Help your animal owners to understand and verbalize what this means for their animals.
To paraphrase a famous quote, owners don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Imagine an owner surveying your framed chiropractic college diploma on the wall and asking, “So, doc, what was your grade point average? And by the way, did you graduate in the upper third, middle third, or lower third of your class?” Or, “What grade did you get for neuroanatomy class?” It probably hasn’t happened. It probably never will. Owners assume that a licensing board has confirmed that you have the smarts to practice. Instead, owners are more attuned to far more subtle clues that reveal your intent, confidence, and certainty.
How do owners know if you care? By simply observing you and how you show up.
• Do you listen?
• Are you curious?
• Are you authentic?
• Are you transparent?
• Are you empathic?
• Are you fully present or just “phoning it in”?
The key is to care, but not care too much. As animal chiropractors, we have to be careful not to care more about the animal than the owner does.
As health practitioners and professionals involved in the healing of animals, it is often important that we remember the B. J. Palmer quote, “Nature needs no help, just no interference.” Sometimes, we need to just stay out of the way of the body and do no harm. Educated owners will agree to this treatment plan and allow the body time to do its job.
Through animal chiropractic, Dr. O has found a sense of belonging, as well as an opportunity to help animal patients resolve their ailments. He continues to find innovative ways to help animal chiropractors grow their practice. He is the author of the book “Yes! It is Really A Thing” and currently teaches at Animal Chiropractic Education Source. Visit him at yeschiro.com.
