Designing a Treatment

     How do I design the treatment? For me, it begins with being on time. If I have an appointment at 11:30a, I make it a priority to design the previous treatment with enough time at the end so that I can take care of business with that patient (what happened this time on the table, the payment, scheduling the next treatment, the goodbye, changing the sheets and getting set up) and still be out in the waiting room between 11:29 and 11:31a.
     This being on time may be peculiar to me. I like to start church on time, for movies to start on time, classes at school to start on time. This way of life about punctuality is not better than other ways for those that are schedule-challenged, it’s just who I have come to be, it serves me. Those people and patients in my life can count on me to be just a little bit early.
     I greet the patient with “won’t you please step back this way.” I don’t greet them by name because there are usually other people in the waiting area and this avoids confidentiality issues. I don’t ask them how they are cause they’ll begin to tell me out in the hallway.
     These are small things and here’s a good place to stop and point out it either all matters or none of it matters. For me, it all matters, every bit of it. The greeting, the cleanliness and color of the sheets on the bed, the music in the treatment, how the needles are lined up on the tray, all of it. Does it matter to you?

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One kind word can warm three months of winter. - Japanese proverb