Seeing someone new, who you don’t yet know, about a personal physical problem that is affecting your life can be a daunting prospect. At Acomb Chiropractic Clinic, we understand this, and our first and most important consideration is to put our patients at ease. We pride ourselves on our warm, friendly but professional approach, that puts our patients first. Your confidence in us is essential so that we can provide you with the advice and care necessary for your complaint. This page provides you with useful information, so you know what you can expect on your first visit to us.
Initial consultation
The first time you visit us you will be greeted at reception by one of our receptionists and asked to fill out some forms. These include some personal details, such as age, address, health history, as well as some consent forms.
Once complete, these forms will be taken through to your chiropractor, who will check your history, before collecting you from our comfortable reception waiting area.
You will be brought through to a private consultation room, where your chiropractor will take a detailed history of your problem. Some of the questions you are asked may seem irrelevant to your complaint, however, your complete medical history is extremely important for gathering an accurate picture of your overall health. This enables us to make the most accurate diagnosis and set the correct treatment plan for you. To ensure chiropractic care is appropriate for your condition we will need to establish an overall health picture.
Physical examination
Once you have discussed the history of your problem with us, we will ask you to sign a consent form for a physical examination, where we will confirm any early ideas about your problem.
Examinations can include:
- Visual examination: Looking at our patients can often show postural related issues, or significant imbalance which may be related to the complaint.
- Checking movements of your body: Restriction or tension in muscles and joints often results from pain and dysfunction.
- Specialised orthopaedic tests: These are designed to stimulate specific anatomy in the body. This helps us refine what part of your body structure might be causing you pain.
- Palpation: Quite simply, we feel with our hands, pressing on muscle and joints, aiming to reproduce your symptoms by stimulating specific structures. We can often feel tight spots in this way.
- Motion palpation: this is when we move parts of your body especially the spine, whilst also feeling with our hands how the anatomy under the skin is moving. This can be a valuable way to determine any restriction in movement of the joints and muscles.
Is chiropractic treatment appropriate?
After all of this, our primary concern is, ‘is chiropractic care appropriate for you and your complaint?’ If the answer is yes, then we will proceed to explain our diagnosis, treatment plan and prognosis. In most cases, we can begin treatment, however, if after checking you out we feel that your complaint is not appropriate for chiropractic care, or it requires further investigations, we will explain our findings and why we feel that chiropractic care is not appropriate at this time.
Referral
If we feel your complaint requires more investigations such as referral for an MRI scan or x-ray, we can refer you for these. We may also refer you back to your GP if we feel the complaint is outside the remit of chiropractic care.
Treatment Plan
After this we will discuss with you the likely cause of your complaint and what can be done to help. This is what we will discuss with you:
- Diagnosis: What is causing your pain? This is the fundamental question, and we aim to answer it to the best of our abilities. However, a diagnosis is not always a straightforward singular answer; a chronic problem for example may cause all sorts of compensation symptoms elsewhere in the body over time.
- Treatment plan: What are we going to do to help? Treatment techniques are extremely varied depending on your diagnosis, age, general health etc. See our services to see possible treatment options we may use.
- Prognosis: How we think you will respond overall and how long it will take. We will give you an estimate of how likely you are to benefit from chiropractic care, how quickly you could feel benefit and what are the likely chances of recovery from your complaint. Understandably this varies for each patient.
- Other tests or onwards referral: Part of our discussions with you may be relaying where we still need further information, whether this be referral for a scan or to another specialist consultant.
Treatment
Providing you are suitable for chiropractic care; most patients are treated on their first visit.
After all your questions have been answered to your satisfaction, we will explain any potential risks associated with treatment and ask you to sign consent to begin treatment. Typically risks of a reaction to chiropractic care are extremely low, and of course we complete our detailed history and examination to mitigate these risks, but some soreness for one to two days after treatment is common. If there are any specific risks associated with your complaint or potential treatment these will be explained to you.
The treatment techniques we will use will be explained and performed in line with your response. If you do not like anything, we can stop and use a different technique in its place. Your comfort and confidence are our utmost priority.
Most patients respond well to the initial treatment, but you will be given some after care advice on what to do and what not to do following your session, as well as using ice (cryotherapy) to reduce any inflammation or potential soreness.
Get in touch
At Acomb Chiropractic Clinic, we are committed to helping you if we can. If you suspect that your discomfort may be helped by chiropractic care, we encourage you to contact us for a personalised consultation. Our experienced chiropractic team will conduct a thorough assessment, explain our findings and what we think is possible in clear terms. If appropriate, we will develop a personalised treatment plan tailored to your specific condition and goals, aiming to maximise your possible benefit.