Far too often in today’s healthcare system, patients are being let down by their healthcare providers. As the patient, you deserve to be guided back to health appropriately and efficiently. Too many injured and ailing people are not being thoroughly evaluated, and thus don’t receive appropriate care, nor are they given a game plan to prevent the pain or injury from returning in the future.

Imagine you’re a kid on a hockey team. You’ve got a big game tonight, and you want to win.

What do you have to do between now and then to win? How does this idea of the kid and their hockey team apply to chiropractic? Let’s walk our way through it.

Step 1: Getting To The Game - History & Examination

To win your game, you have to show up at the right ice rink. You need to make sure you know where you’re going.

At your first appointment, we do a thorough health history and examination. We’re committed to finding your problem and correcting the root cause, not just managing the symptoms. By diving deep into the details of your health and really looking at your body and your movement, we can start on the right path. We can get to the ice rink.

Too often a patient visits their primary care physician or a specialist, and they walk away with no answers. They may go through a decent health history and consultation, but usually, they get only a very low-level musculoskeletal exam. The doctor may not even assess the muscle tissue, the joint function, or the movement of the patient. In many cases, they’ll perform a few orthopedic tests and refer you for some diagnostic imaging, before concluding that you must rest for 6-8 weeks and prescribing you some medication to help “manage” your condition. 

Does this approach work? Maybe, sometimes. Unfortunately, this approach is not based on the most recent evidence and research, and it’s not going to help you get back to what you love any faster. This approach also doesn't address the cause of your problem, meaning that the issue could come back again as soon as you start your normal activities again.

As a patient, it is important to understand what you should expect from a comprehensive evaluation and assessment. Your evaluation and assessment should provide you with a working diagnosis and the potential indirect causes of the pain or injury. The diagnosis should be specific and clearly communicated. 

In order to determine an appropriate working diagnosis a comprehensive evaluation should include, but is not limited to: 

• Detailed Health History - Why did you make an appointment with us? What’s your past health history? What are your current lifestyle habits? All of these things tell us what’s wrong, why it’s wrong, and where we need to go from here. This helps us set our treatment goals.

• Orthopedic & Neurological Testing - These are a basic but crucial part of the exam. This tells us if there’s anything big or scary happening in your body, while also giving us clues as to what might be the problem.

• Range Of Motion - How are you moving? Is there pain as you go through a range of motion? Is your range of motion too big or too small? All of these things are considerations when looking at joint motion, telling us if tissues are too tight or too loose and helping us narrow in on your problem.

• Muscle and Joint Palpation - This is where the chiropractic part really comes into. We use our hands to tell us where your problems might be, and where we can focus our treatment. Are your muscles tight in a certain area or in a certain pattern? Are your joints moving well, or are they gummed up and restricted?

• Functional Assessment - We look at your biomechanics: how you’re moving and where any deficits might be. Are your muscles contracting right? Do you have imbalances or weaknesses that need to be corrected? Are your symptoms actually coming from an issue somewhere else in your body?

• Gait Analysis - We evaluate how you walk to see if things are normal, or if things have gone haywire. This aspect isn’t always critical to your case, but it can give us helpful hints and clues along the way.

By doing a thorough evaluation and assessment, we get the information we need to determine the appropriate course of care for you and your problem.

A thorough history and examination give us the directions to the right ice rink, but they don’t win the game for us.

Step 2: The Warm-Ups - The Treatment & The Plan

Once you get to the rink, you have to get ready for the game. You have to get dressed, warm up, and get yourself ready for the game, both mentally and physically.

This is where our treatment comes in. A lot of people think that the treatment is how you win, but it’s not. The treatment helps you prepare to get where you want to be and to do what you want to do. As your healthcare provider, I’m not the hero or the star of your game - that’s all you. I’m here to get you in the right zone with the right skills and tools to get the job done.

At Northbound, our treatments include:

• Chiropractic Adjusting - Adjusting involves applying gentle force to a joint that’s restricted or fixated. An adjustment increases motion, decreases pain, and improves muscle strength & motor control.

• Soft Tissue Mobilization - Soft tissue mobilization involves things like trigger point work, assisted stretching, and manual therapy. Exactly what technique we use depends on you, your body, what your respond well to, and what your goals are. Soft tissue mobilization loosens tight muscles and eases pain, while increasing mobility and strength.

• Corrective Exercise - We will recommend corrective exercises to address your movement deficiencies and weaknesses, helping to solve your problems and prevent them from reoccurring. After all, what’s the point of doing all the treatment if your problem comes back?

• Lifestyle & Nutrition Changes - Along the same lines, many of our health problems are related to certain lifestyle habits and nutritional factors. We counsel you through some of these changes. We try to keep the changes manageable and impactful, giving you the biggest improvements with the smallest changes.

Conservative treatment should not be a “one size fits all” approach. With multiple options available, it’s important that your care plan is individualized for you, based on the findings from your comprehensive assessment and your personal goals.

There are two parts of your treatment plan: the passive care (what we do), and the active care (what you do). The passive care aspect includes adjusting and soft tissue work, and it can only get you so far toward your goals. The real changes come in with the active care, the exercises and lifestyle changes that you do.

Step 3: The Game - The Follow-Through

The real battle starts in the first period. You’ve got to use the skills you learned and play hard to get the win. The only person who can win the game is you (and your team, but we’re focusing on you).

This is where your active care comes in. This is the part where you execute your end of the treatment plan.

This is you, doing your exercises, making the recommended lifestyle changes, and sticking to your treatment schedule.

The stuff we do during your visits is important, don’t be mistaken. But that aspect of the treatment can only take you so far, in most cases. Research shows that the best outcomes for low back pain come when chiropractic care is combined with active home care, like exercises. The same holds true for most other musculoskeletal conditions.

But, maybe you’re not out to win the game and you just want to have fun playing. That’s totally fine with us. If you just enjoy the adjusting and the soft tissue work, that’s still great. We’re super excited to work with you. Not everyone NEEDS to be at 100% function, many people are perfectly happy if their pain is manageable and they can get through their day.

Step 4: The Win - Your Goals

You played a great game, you did everything right, and everything worked out like it should. You won the game!

Your win is you, getting back to what you want to do and achieving your personal health, wellness, and performance goals.

What’s defined as a win in our practice is up to you. Your wins and your goals are completely your decision.

Maybe your just want to get out of pain.

Maybe you want to get rid of your health issue without drugs or surgery.

For the athlete, maybe you’re looking to improve your performance while reducing your risk of injury.

For the parent, you might want to have more energy and motivation to play with your kids.

For the grandparent, maybe you can’t lift your grandkids right now, and you really want to.

For the office worker, you used to love your job but that pain in your neck and shoulders has gotten so annoying that you can’t focus on your job anymore.

For the runner, maybe you can’t get through a mile without your feet and calves acting up, so you quit running, even though you love it.

The options are endless. Whatever your goals are, Northbound is here to help you achieve them.

The Coach & The Player - The Doctor & The Patient

The coach doesn’t win the game, at least not directly. They provide guidance, encouragement, and direction for the players. The coach gives the players the tools they need to improve their skills and win the game. The player is the one who puts in the work and wins the game.

Every great sports story has a great coach behind it. Take your pick: The Mighty Ducks & Coach Gordon Bombay, the Dillon Panthers & Coach Eric Taylor, the 1980 US Men’s Hockey Team & Herb Brooks.

The coach and the player together make up a team. Coaches do their part to teach, guide, and encourage you, while you do your part by showing up and doing the work.

As your healthcare provider, I can only do so much to get you to reach your goals. I can give you all the treatments, guidance, plans, recommendations, and encouragement you want, but ultimately, you have to execute the plan for us to get 100% of the way there.

Unfortunately, I can’t be with you every second of the day to make sure that these things are happening. You need to make a commitment to yourself to follow-through, whether that’s following the treatment plan to a T or just keeping regular appointments to manage your pain.

You are the player. You are the one who wins the game, whatever that win looks like for you. As your chiropractor (your “hockey coach” in this scenario), I will work with you to get you to that win, or as close as we can, but I am not the hero. I am not the one who puts in the work. I am not the one who wins the game.

Summary

• Step 1: Get To The Rink - A thorough history and examination tell us where we need to go. They tell us where we need to go to fix your problems and get you to your goals.

• Step 2: Get Ready/Warm Up - The treatment and the plan get you ready for the work you need to do. They help manage your pain, loosen up tight muscles, and increase your strength and mobility.

• Step 3: Play The Game - This is the real work. This is you, following through on the treatment plan, doing the work, and making the changes you need to make to get where you want to be.

• Step 4: Win - Winning means something different to everybody. Whatever your goals are, the win is when you achieve those goals.

And we forgot an important step in this process:

Step 0: Registration - Scheduling & Intake

You’ve got to be registered for the team to play in the game. You need to be on the team to win.

(Unless you’re playing unorganized backyard hockey, which is cool too.)

At Northbound, there are two steps to registering: scheduling your first appointment and filling out your intake form.

Scheduling your first appointment is showing up at team registration. Filling out the intake form is getting your name on the roster. This starts the process.

We can’t start your journey to winning the game and achieving your goals if you don’t schedule the appointment.

Click the button below to learn more about scheduling your first visit, or contact us by phone or text at 763-373-9710.

Wishing you the best,
Dr. Nicholas Carlson
Northbound Chiropractic
Serving Delano, MN, Maple Plain, and the rest of Wright and West Hennepin Counties

Curated from the Chiropractic Success Academy