First visit to the Chiropractor

Ask the Chiropractor- What to expect at your first visit to a chiropractor.  Dr Brant Hulsebus breaks down what a typical first visit to a chiropractor would be like.  He discusses his own clinic and some things other clinics might do different.  #healthy815 #ICAchiropractor

www.rockforddc.com

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- Hello, welcome to another edition of ask the chiropractor. I'm Brant Hulsebus chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. And the point of this podcast is the fact that people have questions about chiropractic but don't always know who to ask. And a lot of times people will ask their family doctor or another healthcare provider that they might know but that healthcare provider doesn't really know what chiropractors do or don't do. So we started this little podcast so you could ask a chiropractor questions about chiropractic. Very much so like if you had a question about dentistry you might ask a dentist and maybe not a podiatrist. So with that being said, welcome to another edition of ask the chiropractor. I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, official team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs and the Illinois RA for the International Chiropractic Association. That's the one of our national associations that works hard for chiropractic rights. And I am the Illinois delegate. I was elected by my peers to represent my state on the national level. So that being said, I was asked a question. What do I expect on the first visit when I go to a chiropractor? If you go back the last couple episodes, we talked about how Medicare works, how your health insurance works. So I looked up my Medicare, I looked up my chiropractic coverage, and I wanted to go to a chiropractor. I walk in the first day. What should I expect to happen that first visit? And I'm gonna answer about my clinic first cause that's where I'm the expert, right? What all, what do I do? I don't wanna necessarily ask for the guy down the street for me, but I'll ask about what I do. And then I'll tell you about what some other clinics like to do to my knowledge. And some other people I've talked to in the past. So my clinic is very much like going to a medical doctor at first. You'll have to fill some forms out that say that you consent to care and this and that. And then also you'll have to fill out a complete history. The history we give you for us is we can usually text it to you before you come in or we can email it to you. And if all those fail, it's still on our website. You just go to our website and fill it out. And if you don't have a computer, you don't do computers. I'm not sure how you're listening to this. But if that's the case we still have the old fashioned paperwork too. You can just come in and fill it out when you get here. Give us a little extra time for that though because we'll have to switch that over to our digital records. So you fill out your history, we import it. We set you down. We go over your history with you. From there you'll be able to, after that you'll sit down and talk to one of the chiropractors. The chiropractor will discuss what he saw in your history and what you filled out and what you had to tell them. We'll listen to you. We'll have the, we'll be curious to see what you had to say about your health. Then we'll try to tell you how we'd apply it in a chiropractic setting, whether or not you're at the right place. If you came in and saw me and I don't think you're at the right place because of working with the IceHogs for 17 seasons we have a lot of friends in the community. And if we found out you came here and you're not a good chiropractic case we would help guide you to the right provider you need to get to. The other thing we would, the other thing we would do before we start is we would get a hold of your other records from other doctors. If you've already seen somebody for something we would love to look at those records, those notes, those images and maybe we can skip some of the steps here with some of the stuff you've already had done elsewhere. We work good. We play well with others. So if you've already been to another provider of a different type, don't worry your chiropractor, we get along with everybody. We'll take a look through those records and see what we can do. As far as being able to use the records, to help guide us in the direction. From there, we're gonna want to talk to you and after we talk to you, then we're gonna want to go in the back and take some x-rays of you. We're gonna take x-rays of your spine front to back and side to side. We want to see your alignment issues. And we want to see your posture issues and stuff like that. If you wanna know a little bit more, why we x-ray you can go back and listen to a previous podcast. I cover this in great detail. There's so many good reasons why we take x-rays of you. We really want to get to know you and give you the best quality care is the bottom line. So after we take the x-rays of you we'll bring you back into the room and we'll go over your x-rays with you that day. We'll show you what we found that day, in that time. We don't make you wait an hour or come back the next day here in our office we do it right then and there. Then after we go over the x-rays with you we're gonna lay you down and we're gonna do a couple chiropractic exams. You don't really do a lot of orthopedic exams. There's orthopedic doctors to do orthopedic exams. We do chiropractic exams because well we're chiropractors and that's what we want to do. We know how to do orthopedic testing too, though to help confirm our chiropractic findings. And if it's from that point if we did our exam, we did our x-rays. We talk to you, we have your consents. Then we usually go ahead and give care that first day. Here in our office we figured that you came in here for a reason. You didn't come here to give us a bunch of information and hope that we can help you later. We figured you're coming in because you're looking for help now. So we'll go ahead and give you chiropractic care that day. If it seems fit now, if it doesn't seem fit, we'll wait. Every once in a while, we'll get somebody in that we need to get some more information on, to gather some more data before we can proceed. But the majority of our patients we're ready to proceed right then and there. So we'll go ahead and get started right then and there. But again, we'll go over everything with you first. Answer all your questions. I often tease, I love questions. I tell everybody I went to the best chiropractic school in the world in order to answer all your questions. So please, please, please ask away. When you have questions, when you come in here. Once all your questions have been answered and all of our exam findings have been done and we get all the information we need, we'll go in and give you a chiropractic adjustment that day. We'll give you a quick adjustment. Well, I'll try to help you out a little bit, give you some relief. We'll talk about what to experience after the adjustment. We'll talk a little bit about what you can do at home to make yourself better and compliment what we do to maybe make your next visit even more effective and even better for your next visits. A lot of times we'll have you go home and rest a certain way, put ice at certain places get up and stretch a certain number of times a day. Then when you come back in for your next day of care you'll be really surprised how much better you're doing after the second visit. Usually on the third visits, when we sit down with you and we kind of give you a care plan or suggestions of what it takes to get you better we don't do that the first day or the second day because everyone who comes here is unique. Everyone that comes here has interesting things about them. And we've never seen anybody a hundred percent just like you. So we don't give in the right of way. We wait to see how you respond after two or three visits. And after the third visit we usually kind of give you a game plan. And I always tease that our schedules are written in pencil because we might have to change along the way, as you do better. We jokingly say, you're not not allowed to do worse. You can only do better. But some people do need more care than we originally prescribe. So we're gonna go ahead and give you your game plan, your schedule. We go over all your insurance, and all your copays, and all your patient responsibilities. And here in this office, we have scheduling apps. We have texting, we have email. We have, but we also still have the telephone. You can always just pick up the phone and call us. We add new services and new technology all the time but we never get rid of our old technology. We always keep the original stuff also so everybody can come in here and feel comfortable. So that's kinda how we do it. Now some clinics they'll get all your information the first day have you come back the next day, and then go over everything more with you in detail and then give you a care plan, your first visit. That's just how they choose to do it. How they choose to run their office. That's not how we do it. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying it's different, different then the way we do it. So that's also a good chiropractic care. Other clinics will, you know they don't even do x-rays and exams. Now that's a personal call. I don't go anywhere that doesn't take an x-ray of me but that's just me personally. There's too many things I've seen over the years that can cause problems to miss out on that so. And again, if you come in and the chiropractor does all that stuff to you and you're not ready to start care, you still have more questions, or you want to do more research after they showed you stuff. Just talk to your chiropractor, tell them, you know, hey I really wanna start care but I have a couple more concerns. Let's get these concerns addressed before we begin until we can take it from there. And most chiropractors will sit down and say, that's great. Let's do that. Let's hit those topics. Let's dive in deeper. If you have a chiropractor that's very forceful about the schedule or very aggressive about the care you need. And won't listen to you. Won't budge or bend. And then, and that's up to you if you wanna stay there. I personally would not. I like to have dialogue and have it go back and forth and converse. I'm the same way with my dentist. I'm the same way with my family doctor. I'm the same way with every healthcare provider I go see. We have dialogue and conversations and find a mutual middle ground. So that's kind of how we pride ourselves who we are and what we do. Can you come one time, get adjusted one time and get better. You come and one time and get one adjustment. And that's not a problem. Will you guaranteed to get better? You know, I went to the gym one time, lifted weights. I didn't lose any weight. I didn't put on a lot of muscle. So the gym must not have worked. So I had to go back over and over again to get better and get stronger, get healthier, get better. So, you know, that's just not a thing. Again, you can go back and look at a previous video. Do I have to go more than once and we break it all down for you. Tell you the hows, the whys and this and that. Just wherever you're watching this podcast. You can see my whole library different episodes feel free to dive in. You can always go to Rockforddc.com R O C K F O R D dc.com. Go to where it says blog. And you can see all my previous little episodes here. You can go back and do more detail. So yeah, before you start going to a chiropractor make sure you go online, read the reviews, see more about them. You can call and ask, you know, Hey, I want to come in. I'm not feeling very good today. Can I get care today? Or how does your doctor do it? Have these conversations, these dialogues with them maybe you wouldn't wanna see a chiropractor that treats you on the first day. Maybe you want your chiropractor to spend more time going over stuff before they start care. Call and ask these questions before you go in. And if they don't want to answer your questions they don't want talk to you about these things then you should raise an eyebrow and think about that As you would any other healthcare provider. So that's my two cents on what to expect a first day of going to a chiropractor. I hope that was helpful. I hope you found it accurate. If you have any questions for me go ahead and leave a comment below, shoot us an email at the fore mentioned website, Rockforddc.com, and I'll be happy to get back to you. And these are just questions that patients ask me or people in the public. So if you ever have a question that you'd like to see me answer, or hear my answer. Feel free to get ahold of me. Leave me that question. And maybe next time you tune in, you'll be the question of the week. Until then stay happy, stay strong, do good. And again, if you have a question about chiropractic ask a chiropractor, thank you.