Not everything in the office goes according to plan. In your mind, things should go from one to the next without much of a hiccup.  This past week was a reminder of that.  Thousands of adjustments are performed in the office on a yearly basis and hundreds of physicals and drug collections and if I told you that there is no risk in performing this job, I’d be lying to you.

There are numerous stories that are constantly circulating on the internet of how dangerous chiropractors can be, while these stories do not necessarily concern me, the statistics just don’t pull enough weight that a lot of mental energy should go into it, but we do get asked about it.  The things that concern me in the office when it comes to chiropractic care are ribs that either stress or strain during P to A adjustments, this does happen 2-3 times per year, it’s painful to the patient and I feel about two feet tall when it happens because normally it happens to some of my favorite patients.  I feel it on my end and the patient feels it right away.

There is not a lot of “treatment” to fix this in the short term; it’s just a complication that we see in the profession a few times a year.  Time and rest is normally the best thing to do and within a week or two, you will be back to feeling normal but the entire purpose of coming to the office is to feel better but when a patient leaves feeling worse, that’s a terrible feeling as a provider.

I’m constantly weighing risk/reward when it comes to treatment.  An older individual comes in with hip pain, it can be complicated, I want to mobilize the joint but I also need progress and not pain.  So sometimes the best things to do are minimal treatment that day and follow up a few more times than being so aggressive they are miserable and essentially cussing you out when they leave.

The number of DOT physicals we perform in the office is constantly rising.  When paperwork gets filled out, people aren’t necessarily truthful the entire time.  Health scares happen to people all the time without then telling me the entire story.  We can request records and get all of the information we can get our hands on and it can just be a judgment call.  99% of the time, the correct judgment is made but you always remember the 1% you question yourself on.

Drug tests are a different animal, the people that come into a drug test and have nothing to hide look at it more as a inconvenience but you do run into situations when people are going to do everything possible to pass a test including, devices and fake urine, in order to keep or get a job. Most of the time, I’m just the collector and don’t have a lot of skin in the game but there are times when people try to pull a fast one on you, it does happen but as long as protocols are followed the people that try to game the system will eventually get caught.

I wanted to write this as a reminder that things do happen, but mentally you have to just keep pressing on.  It takes a lot of mental energy when things don’t go according to plan.  We strive to do the best we can with all patients that walk in the door.  We do feel bad when adjustments go wrong and never forget the DOT’s that press the envelope or the “judgment” call but we do the best we can and have to keep moving forward.