Online consultations are now available with Spriggs Chiropractic! Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Royal College of Chiropractors has recommended the temporary suspension of all face-to-face consultations with new or existing patients of all UK chiropractic practices and clinics for the following 3 weeks.
It was a gut-wrenching decision to suspend the clinic, even if only temporarily. We have so many amazing patients who come to us for all kinds of conditions and complaints. Whether it is for continued care, prevention measures for migraines, treatment for neck pain, low back pain or headaches arising from the neck. But our patients’ health has always come first, so temporarily suspending our practice was not an easy decision to make, but it was the right one.
As a result of this temporary suspension of normal services, we have added some new ones including online consultations. These are ideally face-to-face video chats that can be conducted via Zoom, Skype or a phone call. We have already had people contacting us through this new service and benefitted from these online consultations, so we want to spread the word to as many people as possible. There are many advantages to online consultations, including no geographical restrictions, I can speak to anyone, anywhere in the world, which is amazing. This means we can provide self-management strategies to ease your symptoms where possible, we can provide you with additional online resources or signpost people to other healthcare providers/services that you may need instead of ours.
There are obviously disadvantages to online consultations, which mainly revolve around the simple fact that chiropractic is a manual therapy and a physical examination of your complaint is a very valuable component of face-to-face consultations. However, ask any medical professional and they will tell you that the most valuable aspect to any medical consultation is gaining an accurate medical history from the patient. Your medical history is the interview process of talking to your healthcare provider about your health and your presenting complaint(s). An accurate and comprehensive medical history gleams the most valuable information prior to performing a physical examination or any diagnostic tests. Many healthcare providers will tell you that they can have a pretty good idea of what the diagnosis is after getting the history from the patient. The great thing about video calls is that other aspects of human interactions, including non verbal communication, such as facial expressions, arm position, and patient posture can also be gleaned from them. Therefore, in an ideal world, we would love to have as many of these online consultations via these methods, but a phone call can also be extremely valuable when necessary.
Our new service of online consultations has only been available here at Spriggs Chiropractic for a few days and it has already proven to be a huge hit with patients. It is something that our sister company Spriggs Nutrition has been doing for years, but we have learned something new from these tough times. As a result, we will continue to offer this service to people in the future after this global pandemic has ended. We are also building into our website the opportunity to you to book your online consultation yourself directly through our website. These will be only available on specific days, but you have the freedom to book them when it is convenient for you! How great is that?
To book your free online consultation with our chiropractor, give us a call on 01635 432383, or email hello@spriggschiropractic.co.uk or follow the instructions on our website.