Kristi Hudson, Director of Special Projects
Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to sit in a room with 7,000 other people and learn from Tony Robbins. This has been a bucket list item for me for a long time. I have been listening to Tony for as long as I can remember. My mother would listen to his cassette tapes in her car every day. It did not matter if we were running to the grocery store or heading out of town on vacation, we were going to listen to the wisdom of Tony Robbins. I did not understand Tony’s sage advice in the early days, but I have certainly learned to appreciate his wisdom in the last 25 years.
There are not many people on the planet who have not heard of Tony Robbins. His high energy, unparalleled passion and enthusiasm for living your best life will make you want to run out and change your life and the lives of everyone around you. He believes strongly that the single characteristic that has the most impact on a person’s success or failure is their “hunger.” It begs the question, “How hungry are you?”
As you embark on your journey to becoming a doctor of chiropractic, I have no doubt that you are hungry. You willingly chose a profession that has struggled for decades with misperceptions of the care provided to patients through various “Quack Attacks.” Although attacks from the AMA are no longer as blatant a threat to the profession, and organizations like the CCGPP (Council on Chiropractic Guidelines and Practice Parameters) address the evidence-based care of chiropractic, the reality is that there is still a lot of misinformation about chiropractic. There are concerns by the public about the affordability of care, frequency of care, health benefits, and safety of treatment. You may want to arm yourself with a mountain of statistical information that can positively address each of these concerns, but I am begging you… just don’t!
Tony says that “Information without emotion is hard to retain, but information with emotion imprints itself on your mind, body and soul.” So instead of unloading a deluge of statistics (what we lovingly refer to in our office as the “show up and throw up” method), dig deep and remember your first encounter with chiropractic. When you reflect on that moment, how do you feel? Share the encounters you had with patients while working in the student clinic. Treating lower back pain in a 65-year-old woman might not seem like much of miracle to many people, but it definitely miraculous to the grandmother sitting in your waiting room who wants nothing more than to hold her grandchild.
There is a time and a place for the knowledge that you are eagerly absorbing each day, but if you don’t speak to the hearts of your patients first, they may never reap the benefits of that knowledge.
Kristi Hudson is the Director of Special Projects and Administrator of the ChiroHealthUSA Foxworth Family Scholarship. Since 2010, she has worked with state associations, COCSA, F4CP, and the CCGPP to provide educational awareness on changes within the profession. As of October 2016, ChiroHealthUSA has donated over $920,000 to support the chiropractic profession. To apply for the scholarship, go to chusascholar.com.
Why is the Discount Challenge prize amount $11,181? Because that is the average “per-occurrence” fine for Medicare inducements. That’s not $11,181 per patient, that’s not per provider, that’s PER VISIT. Stinks, doesn’t it? To us, the prize amount is worth the investment if we can help our profession better understand proper discounting.