No, they didn’t assess me.

So I hear this a lot and I am sure you do to, or do you?

If you’ve never heard a patient say to you that the last place they went to ‘did not assess them much’ then you may not be doing enough.

Now I am not here to tell you how to assess, that is up to you and your practice style, however, there are two main reasons you should assess properly and do more than expected:

1.       Stay out of jail.

2.       Wow factor for referrals.

Stay out of jail.

Yes it’s true, your assessment will save your bacon. If you fail to do a full and proper assessment you are a sitting target for the regulator who will go out their way to make an example of you if you are found not to.

This does not mean doing a full cranial nerve screening on every patient but there are some essentials that I will list below.

And the other crucial thing here is to make sure you NOTE DOWN all your exam and all the findings, be them positive or negative. This is a mistake I made in one of my early GCC cases and a common error in the profession, to only record a +ve result.

Here are my top assessments to stay out of jail:

1.       SMR – sensory, motor, and reflexes on all patients.

2.       SLR – straight leg raise on lower back pain and radiculopathy.

3.       Doorbell and foraminal compression – for neck pain and radiculopathy.

4.       Cauda Equina questioning - on all lower back pain and radiculopathy.

5.       Cranial nerve and Cerebellar testing – on all headaches and dizziness.

This is not exhaustive, and you should exercise your clinical judgement. But please, as vitalistic as you may be, if you are regulated, don’t be negligent.

Wow factor for referrals.

An easy way to gain referrals in practice is before you even begin care with someone. It is through creating such a wow New Patient assessment that they go and tell all their friends and family. This is why I choose to call it a ‘New Patient Experience’. Because it should be exactly that, an experience.

So here are the main things to keep in mind when wowing a patient at the start:

1.       Know and greet them by their name.

2.       Know why they came in – read their form before.

3.       Excellence in service – offer water, take coats, all team members say hi.

4.       Listen to them - really listen, you show listening by paraphrasing back.

5.       Be excited for them and their next visit.

Build these 5 components into your initial visit and you will WOW.

So be honest with yourself, could you be doing better, are people shouting about you from day 1 (in a good way)?

With love,

Tom