Good News from Acupuncture Without Borders

The report below comes from Acupuncture w/out Borders recent and ongoing work with refugees in Greece. I just want everyone of my readers to know about all the great work done by this "little engine that could" organization! I love what they are doing!  This kind of thing is how we stand up for what we believe in!
How can we grow this kind of work in the world?
Visit the AWB website for ways that you can get involved. Good wishes to us all and thank you for reading.

AWB Trauma Healing Work (and Zumba!) at the Ritsona and Oinofyta

Refugee Camps in Greece – August 2016 Update!

This August, AWB trained volunteers Amy Schroeder, Sarah Fields and Lisa Lourey (AWB’s third team to Greece) have been providing ear treatments, massage, yoga and Zumba classes in the Ritsona and Oinofyta refugee camps north of Athens, Greece. Yes, Zumba! Now a wildly popular part of the day at the Ritsona camp’s “Women Only Space” due to Lisa’s amazing Zumba teaching skills and ability to speak Arabic.

Ritsona camp houses 600 Syrian and Kurdish refugees, while the Oinofyta camp provides shelter to almost 800 Afghan refugees. There are more than 25 other camps throughout Greece where over 50,000 refugees wait for asylum or deportation back to Turkey. AWB has been working with NGOs at Ritsona andOinofyta including Lighthouse Relief, ECHO, I Am You, and the Seventh Day Adventists to provide treatments to relief workers and camp residents.

Camp residents have been extremely receptive to AWB’s treatment offerings. The healing service work of this team has created strong connections between AWB and the refugees and volunteer relief workers at both camps. The way is now open to send a larger team to both Ritsona and Oinofyta in September- October 2016. Here are some of team leader Amy Schroeder’s descriptions:

Oinofyta Camp, August 16:

We met John and his wife Paulina. They head the medical team with the Seventh Day Adventists at Oinofyta. They are very open to us treating in the camp. They offered a small space, their storage room, where the dentist (that comes periodically) treats people. Lisa and Sarah treated volunteers in there.

While Lisa finished up with volunteers, Sarah taught a yoga class in an 8x10ft room...I think she had 8-10 people inthere! It was quite a sight! The women had hijabs off so no photos were allowed. Later, Lisa and Sarah were in that same small 'yoga' room, now with about 14 women lined up against the walls, with peaceful music playing, a small candle burning in the middle of the room and needles in their ears. Again....quite a sight to walk in to see such a full room of beautiful women that Lisa and Sarah gathered up!  Living conditions for camp residents: There are open rooms that residents can stay in inside the big warehouse but the people (that live) in tents outside prefer to stay in the tents (in view of the highway)because they want the people of Greece to see that they're there. If they all go inside and take down the tents, then no one will see them. Everyone is dehydrated it seems (at both camps). Lots of headaches. Paulina concurred...

Nahid’s husband (who AWB met at the Piraeus makeshift camp in May and is now at Oinofyta camp) slept for ten hours after his treatment today. AWB met Nahid and Ramin at the Piraeus makeshift camp at the Athens post in May 2016.
Their move to the new camp has provided a better living situation and they are with other Afghan families.

Later at Ritsona Camp, August 16:

After the peaceful ear seed treatment in the Women’s Only Space, then Lisa did one Zumba song because they were begging her........again, so many women in a small room. Everyone is just hungry for things to do.

Next....

AWB will be sending a fourth team to Ritsona and Oinofyta in September-October 2016, and will be meeting with Greek acupuncturists to connect them with service work at the camps. We are working on long term service provision so that ongoing support can be offered to camp residents. AWB is also developing training for European acupuncturists who want to create trauma healing support projects for refugees in countries such as Germany. Projected training date will be March 2017. Stay tuned for updates!

"Special" Calendar Days and How to Use Them to Grow Your Practice

Every month of every year there are literally scores of "special days." If you search resources such as Chase's Calendar of Events (which is published anew each year) for special days, you will find no lack of possibilities. Here are a few ideas:

1. October 16th is World Food Day. You could offer free treatments for one day to anyone who brings in a full grocery bag of non-perishables. When they are all collected, take the donation to the local community homeless shelter or other organization that offers free meals to homeless folks. Better yet, get 5 other acupuncturists in your community to do this with you and then contact the local paper about it. Make sure you take some photos!

2. October 22nd is Make A Difference Day. What project in your community would you like to support? Offer a "by donation" community acupuncture day and donate the proceeds to your favorite local non-profit. Again, what it you could get every acupuncturist in town to join in on that effort? Tricky? Yes. Impossible? No.

3. November is National Sleep Comfort Month. How about you write an article on Chinese medical/acupuncture treatments for improved sleep and publish it in every newsletter, newspaper, online magazine, your own blog, corporate in-house newsletters, and anywhere else possible? An offer for a free consult to discuss prospective patients' sleep issues would be an added plus.

4. Veteran's Day is November 11. A free community clinic day for all veterans could be a hit. Don't forget to let the media know about it if you decide to do this.

5. The first Thursday of November is Men Make Dinner Day. Ask all your men patients to send in photos of themselves cooking dinner. Post them on your Facebook page and offer a free treatment to the one who snaps the best photo, or a 1/2 price tx to all who participate.

You get the idea here and this is, obviously, endless. Be creative! You could choose one special day per month, or one per quarter... whatever works for you. This is a great way to build community, participate with patients in ways that are fun and lighthearted as well as serious and meaningful.

As we go through this very difficult election cycle in the US, I love to do things like these to refocus on something more fun and that also show the fundamental good hearts of everyone who gets involved.

Happy Autumn and thanks for reading.

All good wishes,
Honora

Patient Communication is a Key to the Kingdom of Practice Success

A few weeks ago I was on the phone with my friend Marilyn Allen (whom many of you know, I am sure!), discussing ways that business education and levels of success could be improved for acupuncture students and practitioners in the US and how we could continue to participate in that effort. We agreed that, while anyone can learn what needs to be learned with respect to budgets and bookkeeping, taxes, insurance forms, and charting, the difficult and more important part of practice success had to do with patient communication and management.

Why? You can (and as a new practitioner you probably will) spend lots of time out in your community building a clientele through volunteering, giving talks, joining networking groups, writing blogs, and working on your website. But once someone decides to book an appointment or come to a free consultation, how do you WOW them enough to keep them coming back for life and believing in our medicine, and more importantly, in you? We need new bookings every week as a new practitioner, but we need steady, long-term patients for success over the long life of a successful practice.

So what are my five keys to making a life-long patient?

1. The greased-bannister effect

You want a prospective patient to find there way onto your treatment table as easily as if they were sliding down a greased banister…in other words, effortless and natural. A prospective patient’s experience should be such that they think “why would I go anywhere else” or “how could I not choose this person to be on my healthcare team.

To get that response, you have to think about every experience a person coming in for the first time or two will have: phone service, ease of finding you, parking or public transport, paperwork, educational materials, smells, sights, sounds, lighting, retail displays, office accoutrements, your library, your bedside manner, the way you touch them and work with them in that first session, and the ease of the check out process. To get a more objective assessment of how well you are doing in all of these areas. Consider creating a check list of these things and having a good friend (one who is willing to be unflinchingly honest) walk through this experience and give you feedback. Then decide what you are able to improve or change to make a new patient’s experience “wow” them.

2. Generate trust and relaxation

My suggestions in this area might begin before they ever arrive at your door. Trust could begin when they meet you at a lecture, a volunteer event in the community, or because of something they read on your website. If you send out a “Welcome Packet” it can include a number of simple educational items to help a patient understand that you are a professional and you are going to take good care of them. If there is more than one room, show a new patient around your clinic so they know there’s nothing “weird behind door number three.” Introduce them to anyone else who works at the clinic (or train for front desk person to do that). Offer water or tea. Then, the room or area where you take histories and do initial consults should:

1. include a library, which could be an impressive sight for a new patient, and have a significant placebo effect
2. be clean, comfortable, and nicely appointed so that it looks professional
3. include educational signage as well as or instead of just artwork.
2. Make a real connection 
1. Whenever you are with a patient, you must control the time but allow them to ask questions to the extent that you can and stay within your time frame.
2. Always educate them about their own body or their health condition…a little at a time. Your knowledge also has a placebo effect.
3. Touch and treat with confidence. Even if you are shaking in your boots, your body language must remain confident, calm, and assuring. Even if you can only be certain of one or two things in your treatment for that day, those things should be done with the grace of a master.
4. Make eye contact. Nod your head. Let them know you hear them, you are listening to them, and you understand them. There is more power in that, perhaps, than anything else you do with a patient.
3. Educate for the long term

Make the assumption that this person will be using Chinese medicine for their health care for the long haul. In order for that to happen, you must slowly and continuously share with them more and more about Chinese medicine and acupuncture. For the first three-four-five visits, your patients should go home with some information about the medicine, a brochure, an article, a piece of research, an assignment such as a food diary on a form that you create, a recipe, an exercise or self-massage regimen (on paper with illustrations), a book to read, a liniment or plaster or poultice to use (with instructions). These things both keep you in your patient’s mind when they are not with you and they increase understanding and enthusiasm. Both of these are requirements for keep patients for the long haul.

One word of caution about education: be careful of Chinese medical jargon. Try to speak in terms that most people can understand. Talk about immune modulation, increased blood flow, energetic balance, reducing energetic stagnation, increased endorphins and brain neurotransmitters, etc. rather than “qi” and other Chinese technical terms. This helps patients share their experience of your care with others more easily.

5. Make as many decisions as you can for the patient

A person coming for treatment is often worried or even frightened about their condition (will it go away, will it get worse, will I have this for life?). One of the mistakes I used to make as a newbee was to say something like “do you want to come in again next week?” to my patients. This was a really uninformed and poor choice of words. I should have been saying “I’d like to see you again this week if possible and again next week at least once as well.” But you can learn from my ignorance!

      You should be the one to decide what the treatment plan should be and tell the patient what your findings are. This is what most patients want. It gives them confidence that you know what you are doing, what the treatment should look like in their case, and how long it should take. You can suggest a course of so-many-acupuncture treatments over a specific period of time, and/or how long they will need to take Chinese herbal medicine. Write it down on a form with your clinic contact information and go over it with the patient. Ask them if they have questions about the protocol and perhaps offer them payment options to save money. Send a copy of this form this home with them.

That’s my top five patient communication suggestions for maintenance of a successful long-term relationship with a patient who will come back again and again for life. Of course, this list could have had ten points instead of five, but these are the ones that I believe are not optional for your prosperity.

Thanks for reading. Best wishes for success. Send me your ideas for a happy and successful practice any time.

Honora Wolfe is the author of Points for Profit: The Essential Guide to Practice Success for Acupuncturists. She paints watercolors, practices Buddhist meditation, cooks gourmet meals, and  tries to make at least a little bit of trouble from her home in Lafayette, CO.

Green Willow Liniment vs. Dragon's Blood LIniment

In January of 2015 Bob and I were lucky to be invited to Sikkim as companions of one of our Buddhist teachers. It was a really interesting journey and Sikkim is a beautiful, steep, Himalayan landscape with wonderful scenery and a pretty comfortable climate, even in January. Still, travel there is slow and arduous. What looks like it's "right across the valley" can take an entire day of switchbacks down one and up another mountain to get to!

The most difficult challenge for me, however, was that two days into the trip I fell and badly sprained my ankle. Though Bob treated me almost every day for the remainder of the trip, it was at least a minor irritation with all the hiking through relatively mountainous terrain.

Months of treating it with moxa and Green Willow liniment provided very slow improvement; baking it in the sun during the summer helped a little bit more. Still, a year later it was not really healed and I felt very discouraged.

Recently the famous statement from the Nei Jing occurred to me that "new injuries are in the channels and old injuries are in the network vessels." Thus, I decided to switch from using Green Willow, which is for traumatic injuries, including old ones, causing pain due to cold, damp, and blood stasis and to try Dragon's Blood instead. I have usually used this liniment for new injuries with bruising and frank, immediate, visible signs of blood stasis. I had never really used it for OLD blood stasis that will not resolve and, frankly, often shied away from this liniment due to the skin-staining nature of its main ingredients. But no more!

Lo and behold, the ankle has started to improve again and is getting stronger. While it is clear that injuries in an older human being don't heal quickly, I have developed a new respect for this liniment and I'm glad to have discovered another use for it with my patients as well as for myself. Just thought I should share this with any of you who use liniments in your practice. While I expect I'll always love Green Willow, Dragon's Blood is my new fave.

Good luck and best wishes!

Front Desk Saavy in Our Clinics

Have you re-considered your front office procedures recently? How is your phone answered? (I hope you are not still answering it yourself all the time). Whoever is answering it, have you written down exactly how, at what speed, and with what tone of voice you want the phone to be answered? For example…have you ever called a company in our industry that you weren’t sure if you got the company you thought you called? You need to make sure that when anyone calls they are immediately

• Sure of whom they called
• Know that the person on the phone was happy to answer the phone
• That the person will help them with whatever reason they called
• The person or people who answer your phone are the voice of your business! Make sure that your customers will like what they hear. If that person is you, practice with a recording to see if you need to sound more “perky” or speak more slowly.

Finally, have you written specific scripts for your reception person for the four or five most common questions people ask. These are pretty universal questions and you can write out exactly what you want your staff to say in response. Ask them to memorize these simple sentences. If you are the answerer, have a script will help you sound professional and will also help you be clear about what you really want to do say about “how many treatments,” “how much it costs,” “will it hurt,” “can you take my insurance,” and can you treat my ___ (named condition or disease).”

If you don’t have any front desk help, what would it take for you to hire someone? I absolutely guarantee that you can make more money with someone to run your front desk that you can by doing it yourself. Think about this…if you pay someone $13-15 per hour, but you are charging $50-60-70 per treatment, would you rather pay yourself the $15 or the $60? There is even a list of 20 other things this person could be doing when the phone is not ringing in Points for Profit (my biz for acupracs book). And, if this person’s presence allowed you to treat 1.5 extra patients per day on average, you’d more than pay for their services, be able to give someone a job, and make your office more professional at the same time.

It's worth thinking about.

Thanks for reading and best wishes. 

Real Marketing

A wonderful quote from Allyn Lewis's blog article "The Mental Cost of Owning A Business That We Need to Talk About"

"Being a human is a far more powerful way to market your brand than any Facebook Ad, finely executed sales copy, or super high profile press placement will ever be. Being authentic is a long term strategy. It’s not a fast track to a few quick sales like other methods. It’s the foundation of a successful creative entrepreneur. When people can trust, relate, and connect with you, in time, they will buy ANYTHING you tell them to."

That's it. Think about it.

Do you use massage therapy in your acupuncture practice?

So little time...so many things to do in one treatment, right? I love to use massage therapy during, before, after, or all three along with acumoxa therapy treatments though there is often little time for it. Still, I have a few basics to share with you about how I work massage into my treatments since I think the power of touch can never be overestimated.
Here are a few ideas that I use regularly with my patients.

1. Rocking the body from the occipital ridge. This move can be used as long as you don't have needles in the head and the person is lying supine. Standing above the patient's head, place the fingers of both your hands (back of your hands on the table, fingers curled up) under the back of the head with the finger tips pressing lightly along the occipital ridge. Rock your fingers slightly toward yourself, as if you were beckoning someone toward you. This can be very gentle and small or it can be more forceful depending upon the patient's condition, how many needles you have in, and where they are placed. You will notice that this small movement will move the entire body down to the toes.

From a Western medical point of view, this moves the cerebral-spinal fluid, slightly stimulates the entire spine, relaxes the eyes, and increases blood circulation to the brain. It also relaxes the musculo-skeletal attachments along the base of the skull.

From a Chinese medical point of view it encourages increased flow of qi and blood to and from the brain via the foot tai yang and foot shao yang channels, and quiets and spirit.

30-60 seconds is adequate.

2. Dragging and pulling the toes. As long as there are no needles in the feet, this is a very easy thing to do and really grounding and relaxing to the patient. Remembering that all the foot yin and yang channels can be strongly accessed at the toes, releasing them in this way is usually appreciated unless the person is very ticklish!

Using your thumb and index finger, firmly and slowly pull each toe from its root to its tip. Take your time with this, sliding your fingers in between the toes. If you like, you can use a soft cloth to help you hold the toes and limit the tendency to ticklishness. This also is nice if it is summertime and people's feet are somewhat sweaty.

We are effectively opening all the foot channels (all the way to eyes, face, and chest) and releasing or relaxing the flow of qi with this movement. Be careful not to move the legs too much if you have needles there. Gentle but firm touch makes this powerfully relaxing.

If there are no needles in the arms, you can do the same thing with the fingers. Or, if you do have needles in the arms or feet, you can add this movement at the end of the needle portion of your treatment.

If you would like to see video of me doing these movements or if you have an interest in seriously combining acupuncture with bodywork, you might take a look at my short online video course on this subject, in which I share an entire approach to this type of work. All the Blue Poppy online courses are 30% off this month. I guarantee that 99% of your patients will love it!

Good luck and remember the power of body work in the context of your treatments.