Listen to Your Patients
Posted on January 28, 2007 - Filed Under General |
Your current patients are your best source of references.  Acupuncture is still a little scary to many people and a good referal from someone they know and trust is invaluable.
Keeping your patients happy requires listening.  Everyone listens in different ways and patients feel heard in different ways. No one can possibly make everyone happy. Listen to what the person is saying.  Do they need reassurance for what is going on? Do they need to have whatever is going on fixed? A difficult time for us to listen can be when our patients are saying they got worse after a treatment.  I have a patient who would sometimes have odd bodily reactions after a treatment.  While the points I did did not suggest that such a thing should happen, I would listen to what she said and ask how bad it was. I would always offer to have her come in so I could check on her (no charge) and if we needed to do another treatment, I would do so (no charge).  She would usually say she just wanted to watch it for a day or so and then the following week she’d be fine. We’d chat and she’d be amazed about her body could do.
I moved a few months ago.  She is now seeing another person for the same chronic condition.  She had one of her reactions. The response was that acupuncture couldn’t possibly have caused that and that it must be one of her medications.  The medications hadn’t changed during the course of the week.  The patient felt completely unheard.
Arguably the other acupuncturist is right. It might not be the acupuncture.  The thing is, the patient thought her body was responding.  She wasn’t being negative. She wasn’t afraid. She just thought that the acupunturist would want to know.  I always thought it was interesting when her body would react that way.  Maybe I’d change what I was doing, or maybe not.  I saw this woman for nearly six years on and off related to her condition.  Because the person I had initially referred her to brushed off her concerns, she is looking for someone else. This person is someone she hopes will listen to her.
I take this as a lesson that being right isn’t always as important as listening to your patient.
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