Over the past few years, there has been an increased awareness in
the area of pediatric chiropractic. Seminars are being given to teach
chiropractors more techniques and effective ways to adjust children.
New literature is being written to educate children and offices are being
designed with a children’s theme. All of these are great and apparently
needed. But there are a few points to be considered.
Practices that stress one type of patients, be it Medicare, personal in
jury, low back pain, or workmen’s compensation, tend to lose sight of
the chiropractic objective and become involved in treating conditions.
Chiropractic care is different than everything else. It cannot be made
similar to any other type of practice without diminishing it in some way.
What other practitioner in the health field takes care of all ages, both
sexes, no matter what condition they have, or even if they have no
condition? What other profession does not treat disease? Chiropractic is
unique. It seems that when chiropractors develop a pediatric practice,
specializing in children, before long they are demonstrating what
wonderful results they get with all types of pediatric disorders. After
all, if you are to promote the uniqueness of your practice, you must say
why it is unique. You would not say “We have a pediatric practice but
we are no more qualified nor any better than any other chiropractor in
taking care of children.” After awhile they are treating pediatric disor
ders and have lost the focus of chiropractic (speaking from a straight
chiropractic perspective). Whenever we add anything to the practice of
chiropractic it diminishes chiropractic.
I believe the same is true for adding adjectives. Even the term
“family practice,” which I admit to using, has a discriminatory tone to it
as it appears in the yellow pages. Does that mean I do not accept
unmarried patients? Apparently most straight chiropractors do not even
like the adjective “straight,” for very few use it in their practices. The
term has become almost necessary to identify what you do (or do not
do), but few use it.
Our focus should not be on getting children into the office, or on
getting any special group into the office, for that is putting the cart
before the horse. Our emphasis should be on explaining chiropractic to
people, all people. If that is done, then children will naturally be
brought into the office. Children are a side effect of educating patients,
not the means. I often tell senior students that children are the greatest
barometer as to whether you are getting the chiropractic message across
to people. If patients understand the Big Idea, they will be anxious to
bring their children in without your asking, advertising, or promoting a
pediatric practice. If your percentage of families begins to get smaller,
then you better “check your slipping.” However, if you are promoting a
children’s practice you have no idea whether you are doing an adequate
job of reaching the entire community with the message of chiropractic.
Children are fun, easy to adjust, they usually do not want to complain
or tell you their problems. We all would love to just adjust them. But if
we focus on the kids to the exclusion of the rest, we end up practicing a
pediatric disoreders type of chiropractic, and in doing that, we do a dis
service to everyone.v8n5
