Page 46 - Welcome to Posture Pro

“100 years later, they still don’t know what you do.” If you
have been in practice longer than 30 days you know exactly
what I mean. Proper patient education is so important in es-
tablishing patient trust, and patient trust is critical to practice
success.

Patient education in any health sciences is a challenge due to
the differences in Intellectual Awareness (IA) of the clinician
and patient. Typically the clinician is trained in the language
of science which uses a lot of Latin and mathematics. Use of
high technology is common, creating another IA communica-
tion barrier. Add to that language specific to a sub-specialty
and you end up with a patient that looks like the picture on
the right.

Don’t mistake IA for level of intelligence. It’s really just about the level of familiarity of a sub-
ject. And, when you are very familiar with a subject you tend to speak the language of that
subject. That’s great when speaking with another person familiar with the subject, but not so
great when trying to explain the topic to others.

Syllable Overload

? Many clinicians make the mistake of trying to
overwhelm the patient with their foreign profes-
sional language and terms. The more syllables
the better, is the thinking. Another common
mistake is in showing off high technology ex-
ams. In the picture on the left, a doctor is show-
ing the results of an MRI scan to a patient who
has most likely never seen an MRI scan. The
patient is physically shaking their head “Yes”
but mentally shaking it “No”.

So, the challenge in effective patient education
is beginning the conversation with a language
the patient understands and using images the

patient comprehends.