We had a student in the clinic the other day who sat in on a few patients. One of her comments was, “You don’t give your patients any handouts.”
It’s true. We don’t, really. No diet plans. No “foods that are high in Vitamin Whatever” lists. No gluten-free recipes.
Why? Because patients don’t need more information. They already have more of that than they can handle. What they need is what you add to information to make it useful.
If you trade in information in practice – and most of you do to some extent – then the same thing applies to you. People don’t really need your instructions and details. They can find those online. They need your insights – the understanding that can only come from experience, wisdom, training, and synthesis. That’s the stuff that keeps them coming back, and helps them stick with tough treatments or make tough changes.
The stretching exercises. The diet plans. The food lists. The instruction sheets. The handouts. All too often they take the place of genuine wisdom.
And when information is necessary? Google already has a far better binder of recipes and stretches and meditations and food lists than we could ever produce.
People can only remember so much. Do you want it to be the overwhelming dismay of more, or do you want it to be something that keeps them engaged, and helps them understand why what they’re doing is so important?
If your next patient only remembers one thing from today, what should it be?
That big binder you gave your client on their first visit? Guess where it is now…
Cool. In a similar vein, a good tip I heard from a massage therapist / personal trainer was this: Give people 3 pieces of homework in between sessions. They will ignore 2, and do 1, and that’s perfect. If you give them only 1, they’ll likely ignore it or forget it. Give them more than 3 and it’s overload and they’ll likely forget all of it.
Anyhow, I like the gist of this post, and agree that information without something more (insight, explanation…) is likely just “noise” to most people.