Does time inherently equal quality? Another way of asking this is: Does time and quality have a linear
relationship when viewed on an X/Y coordinate graph?
Any quick pondering over these questions should logistically
reveal the answer to be no. You can
spend a long time on some project, and still have a poor quality result. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you can
observe an expert spend a short amount of time on their craft, and get
masterful, high quality results.
https://www.thejoint.com/utah/salt-lake-city/sugar-house-45001
Sometimes I overhear patients complaining along the lines
of… “Last time I was here, the other doctor that worked on me seemed kind of
rushed.”
My first response to that is one of sympathy. But at the same time, I feel the need to question
them. Do you not feel the adjustment was
still accomplished? Do you not realize
that at The Joint Sugar House, we see around 130 patients per day? And that second question isn’t brought up to
say, “We don’t have time to see you for more than X amount of time…” (even
though, generally speaking, this is true)… But rather, it’s brought up to help
patients recognize that we’ve seen it all!
There’s a saying that says after you’ve spent about
10,000 hours practicing your craft, you’ve become a master. Well, our doctors at our clinic have spent at
least that much time practicing chiropractic, and then some. And once you become a master/expert, it
doesn’t take time to get it done. We
don’t want to waste your time. We
understand you have places to be.
Within this same context, I’ll see patients (either
myself, or on the other table with the other doctor) who ask for more attempts
on an area that’s already been adjusted.
Why??? It’s like they’re fooling
themselves into thinking more “pops” can happen if they have “more time” spent
on an area. It could be said that if a
placebo experiment were done on some of these patients with this reputation,
they’d get the same result. In other
words, if (and that’s a big if, as this is only hypothetical) we were to give a
purposefully lousy adjustment on a patient, but spend a lot of time doing so,
the patient would be equally satisfied as their other high quality visits
(wherein they unnecessarily asked for more work on already adjusted areas).
Some may view this as a rant, or as Dr. Martin
complaining about patient requests. It’s
not. It’s a plea for more patients to
trust in the expertise of the doctors.
The biggest reason for this plea?
The patients who DO trust, and
have quick in and out adjustments, are the ones who appear to rarely have
discomforts and pains, and who have a generally higher level of happiness upon
seeing us. Maybe there’s something to
this after all…
