A Cook, a Chef, and a Chiropractor
The future belongs to chefs, not to cooks… A cook is not an artist. A cook follows a recipe, and he's a good cook if he follows the recipe correctly. --Seth Godin
When doctors graduate from chiropractic college, all emerge, diploma in hand, as cooks. Spinal technicians. The hours spent in the classroom and student clinic are all geared to develop detailed, precise skills to diagnose and adjust a vertebral subluxation. In school, creativity and originality are frowned upon. We are taught that there is only one right way to utilize an adjustment technique. We are graded by how precisely we can practically reproduce all the standards of an adjustment technique.
There is absolutely no art.
Despite the fact that from day one, we are taught in chiropractic school that chiropractic is a science, a philosophy... and an art.
The most unfortunate thing is that years after attaining their degree, many if not most doctors of chiropractic will still prefer being a cook over being a chef.
Being a cook is safe. Being a chiropractic cook takes away some of the stress of accountability; the technique is the recipe. Just follow the recipe and if the outcome fails, it's the recipe's fault not the cook's.
It can even get to the point where a chiropractor may begin to seek after additional recipes to follow-- even outside the realms of adjusting technique. For the desperate chiropractic cooks, certain practice management experts are more than happy to sell them specific "proven" scripts on what to say when you meet a patient for the first time, do a report of findings, and close a treatment plan sale.
Word for word. Just follow the script (recipe) and get paid.
What our chiropractic profession desperately needs are more doctors who are willing to step up and be chefs. Doctors who claim their adjustments to be works of art. Doctors who realize that the words which come out of their mouth must not only educate, but inspire patients.
Chiropractic artists who create and share freely. From the heart.