Patient Education Quiz and Drawing

Patient education can become boring. The same old words, definitions, and scripts can lose their excitement after a while. During a report of findings you can get the feeling that even though your patients keep nodding their heads, like those of little dash board animals, they just don’t seem to get it.

One of the biggest problems in education is trying to keep things interesting. To help with this, you might try the following program. It quizzes the patients on their understanding about chiropractic and rewards them for their correct answers.  It can be done once or twice a year to better educate your patients and add some extra energy into your office. As an added bonus, it will also better educate your staff.

Procedure

25 questions. If you are going to run the program for a month, you need to come up with about 25 health related questions. These can be defining chiropractic terms, such as “subluxation” or “vertebra”. You can also add questions that often come up in your adjusting room. For example, “What makes the pop sound when I get adjusted?”  To involve the staff, set time aside at a staff meeting and work out some of the questions. For each question, come up with a simple and obvious answer. Then, come up with two “decoy” type of answers.  Don’t be too much of a perfectionist here. Again, keep it simple.

White Board. Each adjusting room and reception room should have a white erasable writing board, or a chalk board. Each morning, a designated C.A. should write down the question in each room with the three answers. Slips of paper should be nearby with a pencil for the patient to write down their answer. Large printed posters can be used if there are no white boards available.

Answer Box. A box should be placed on the front desk with a small sign saying: “Chiropractic Quiz Answers Here.”

Drawing. At the end of the week, all the correct answers are placed in a pile. From this pile, a slip is randomly selected. The patient is informed the next week that they won the drawing.

Prizes. Prizes can be nutritional supplements, pillows, free massage, or anything of a reasonable amount (less than $40.) They also could be modest gifts from local businesses that are also your patients.

Duration. The program can last one week, or an entire month. The drawings should be held weekly.  December is a good time for this internal program as external promotions are less effective.

Promotion. You should promote this drawing with a poster and by word of mouth. You could call this “Chiropractic” or “Health Education Month.”