Preparing a practice member to receive a chiropractic adjustment is not part of the practice of straight chiropractic, eg. placing them or laying them down on the table. That is why a non-professional (secretary, receptionist, CA) can do it. Granted, it changes body physiology but that is not its intent. The problem arises when the chiropractor performs or has a procedure performed with the intention of changing body physiology in order to prepare an individual for a chiropractic adjustment or to have a force introduced into the body. That takes knowledge and professional judgement which chiropractors do not have (and it is doubtful whether anyone else does). To maintain, that you know what the physiology of the body should be and can create that situation in order to make the body more receptive to an adjustic thrust is the height of arrogance.
If they had to be “prepped” for an adjustment every time an adjustment happened (considering the body makes it’s own adjustments all the time), how would they have time to do anything else?
The sad part is it is absolutely unnecessary to do if the chiro has a valid analytical proceedure (telling you where and where not to introduce a force and the direction of the force) and is receptive to the practice members level of relaxation (never introducing a force against resistance). All too often offices using PT have the medical objective treating some ailment. They are under the gun to get results (making the patient feel better) and will use any and all means to do so, including using more force than is needed to bring about a manipulation, oops, I mean an adjustment.
What’s worse is the number of offices that have unqualified staff members doing the PT (mostly done for the chiro to save the $$ of hiring someone trained in those modalities). Even the trained ones don’t have a clue as to what the physiological changes should be, other than the patient is hurting and their physiology at that time is not conforming to some established norm.
A friend of mine uses heat and electric stim on EVERY person he sees. His reasoning was that it relaxes the person to receive the adjustment. One day he called me to fill in for him as he was sick and knew I had off that day. I told him yes under one condition, no heat and stim, just good old fashioned 10 fingered chiropractic. He was in no position to say no so he said just do what you need to do. As each person came in I introduced myself and had them lie down on the technique table. Some questioned why no heat and e-stim, and I simply said we’re just going to be doing chiropractic today. đŸ™‚
I saw 50+ people that day and the most common response was, wow, it’s so nice to be able to get in and out of the office so quickly! I checked back in a few days later after my friend was back in the saddle to see how the feedback was. He said no complaints at all from the patients towards me, but several passed comments to the chiro asking if they could skip the PT and even more asked if he would adjust them like Tom did! I love my friend dearly but he was a jack hammer and I would be hard pressed to allow him to check my spine after watching him adjust a few people. I couldn’t imagine him adjusting without the PT to “loosen them up”!!
I shared with him a few technique ideas (that can be used with virtually any technique) that would make him more gentle, specific, refined and effective in introducing a force. He even tried to do without the PT. It lasted about a week and he went back to his old ways.
Trouble maker :)!
I would love to have heard how he explained his position to them.