A natural health lending library is a very practical marketing tool – if used.

A lending library is a collection of books, DVD’s, and other information that you can loan your patients. It is part of an ongoing patient education program. The better your patients understand what you do and why you do it, the more likely they will be to stick to a long-term care program and to refer their family and friends for services.  Patient education, compared to other marketing activities, is not that expensive.  It has a good ROI!

Download a list of suggestions here for your chiropractic or natural health care library.  [Ideas for your Lending Library]  Please give us your suggestions as well.

This all is logical, right?  We all know this.

So…why is it rarely done? Most of the offices that I have seen with lending libraries have them on the bottom shelf in some corner of their office filled with books from a garage sale and old VHS video cassettes.

Everyone knows patient education is important. Like the Spinal Care Class, or new patient education class, everyone knows this is good for the patient and helps the office grow. Right?

Funny story… I attended a small get-together of chiropractors one evening here in Southeast Wisconsin. The presentation was given by the lead doctor of a multiple doctor office. Great doctor, nice practice. He had been in practice for years and looked weathered and ready for retirement. The talk was how to give an effective Spinal Care Class for new patients. The presentation was full of practical content. The only thing… the doctor wasn’t that cheerful about his presentation.

After he finished, and as he left the front of the room looking down at the floor, he muttered, as if passing on a confidential apology to another spy… “But we don’t do the classes anymore.”

So, no need to fool ourselves here. It might be just easier to buy some nice posters and be done with it.

Ah, but there is a trick to making your lending library work… and patient education in general work!

The lending library is primarily for YOU — and each member of your professional team.

We have been looking at it all wrong.  The lending library is a reflection of YOU!

If YOU study, and if your support team studies and learns, you all will be so enthusiastic about the information that you will insist that your patients learn this information as well.

Be curious and ask yourself some questions. For example:

• Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to significantly lower blood pressure. Do your patients know this? How does it work?
• Why do some intervertebral discs degenerate and others (in the same spine) do not?
• Do your patients understand the myth of cholesterol, heart disease, and how statin drugs may be causing some of the symptoms they are coming in to see you for?
• How is the adaptive immune response affected [during “cold and flu season”] by the adjustment?
• Is the average time for a whiplash patient to achieve maximum improvement 7 months 1 week? If so, why? If not, what is it?
• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for rheumatoid and/or osteoarthritis conservatively cause 16,500 Americans to bleed to death each year. Do your patients know this? Do their families?
• Glutamate and aspartame can cause chronic pain sensitization, and removing them from the diet for 4 consecutive months can eliminate all chronic pain symptoms. Do your patients know this? Do their spouses? *

Read a book, watch a video, question authority, ask questions — seek the truth. Get excited about learning new things about your profession.

DON’T GET BORED. If you are bored, quit and go home!

Otherwise, be grateful for the opportunities we all have to learn and expand our knowledge and understanding of the services we provide and the world in which we provide them.

Be curious.

Ultimately, you sell yourself before you sell your services. How can you sell a care class or an extended treatment plan if you are not truly excited about them?

Learning new aspects of chiropractic, health care, wellness, sickness, the sickness industry, how your patients are being manipulated and exploited… all this should agitate you one way or another.

For example, I watch Vaxxed – the movie — and then listened to Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Brandy Vaughn (former Merck employee) talk on YouTube about the movie and how they are now being covertly and overtly intimidated to shut up.  If this pharmaceutical company is trying to help members of your community get healthier, why are they now attempting to squash dissent and in such a sinister and yet powerful way? I can’t help but wonder: just how powerful are they at manipulating public opinion? How are they influencing my community and my family?

If you look further into the effects of pharmaceuticals, from Vioxx to statins to MMR and vaccines, and explore some of these questions, you can’t help but feel compelled to educate your patients on how to keep their children healthy and free from a toxic environment.

Some of the most successful offices I have seen have spent untold sums on going to seminars (and on coaches!). The verysuccessful can be reckless with book buying and webinar watching and seminar attending.

Continuing education isn’t just for re-licensing seminars. How dull!

If you are not impatiently curious about different aspects of your profession – its science, its philosophy, what it is up against in the market place, you are becoming part of the problem.

Stay curious. Question authority. Study.

Do this:

Assignment #1. You. Order a book – or video- from Barnes and Noble, your local books store, or Amazon. Read most of it on a weekend or weeknight evening rather than watching TV.  Present what you learned at the next staff meeting and put the book in your Library.

Assignment #2. Your Team. Have your staff read a few chapters from a book, or watch a video from your lending library and then give a presentation about it at a staff meeting. Everyone learns and the staff member learns twice! Give bonuses for outside study.

Just like we work on our patients, just like we work on our business, we must work ON our roles as professionals and we do this by studying.

Then, no doubt, you and your team will be dragging your patients over to the lending library to check out the latest editions to your collection.

And your patients will know that they came to the right place. They may think you are all a little nerdy, maybe even fanatical about better health, but they will know that you sincerely care about them and their wellbeing, not just in collecting some money for some fast or rushed service.

Assignment #3. Stay curious and learn – and provoke others to do the same.

Sincerely,

Ed

See our attached list of sample books and videos for your Lending Library Ideas for Your Lending Library

Please give us your suggestions for informative books or videos!

*Questions taken from Dan Murphy’s web site.www.danmurphydc.com