Understanding the Initial Consultation at Connective Chiropractic; your local Chiropractor in Basingstoke

Going to a Chiropractor for the first time can be scary. We know this. Not only may you not be sure what to expect, there’s also a huge amount of varied and often poor quality information online that can make things confusing. We want to explain in this blog what we do at Connective Chiropractic. As your local Chiropractor in Basingstoke, we feel it’s our duty to make it simple for you to decide whether coming to see us in the first place is the right step for you, and we’d like to make it as easy as possible.

This blog post contains information from Connective Chiropractic’s owner and principal Chiropractor, James Harrison, as well as feedback, testimonials and reviews from our customers. It should give you a decent flavour of what to expect so there aren’t any big shocks should you decide to take the plunge and book in to see us.

Connective Chiropractic is your local, multi-award winning Chiropractor in Basingstoke

The rationale for the initial consultation

As a regulated profession, the first step to booking in with a Chiropractor is our initial consultation session. This session is important. It helps us us to better understand what is going on and why you have come to see us. It also gives us an opportunity to find out more information from your body to inform how we can help you best. We’ll also be able to tell you at this session whether Chiropractic is right for you or whether seeing another practitioner would be better for your needs.

We understand that when first coming to our practice many people have aches and pains, and want to make progress on them quickly. The initial consultation lets us know how we can best help you to reach your health care goals safely and effectively. It is also an opportunity to welcome you to our clinic and ensure you’re happy to proceed, with all the information you need, before we continue. We’ll never force you to have Chiropractic treatment at our clinic and we will only ever adjust if there is a clinical rationale for care, so it’s a great opportunity for us to ensure that we are all on the same page and are all happy to go forward before starting out.

Testing your body at your Basingstoke Chiropractor, Connective Chiropractic

Once we’ve spoken about what’s going on, we’ll have a pretty good idea of whether Chiropractic may be suitable or not for you. However, we often still need more information to be sure. A common reason for this is because symptoms (eg: pain, restriction, discomfort) don’t always reflect the cause of what is going on and can be more secondary in nature. A series of tests allow us to understand where exactly the source of the issue is, and helps us to focus on the right places. We’ll test the area of complaint but don’t be surprised if we also test other areas at the same time to get a wider picture of the health, strength, and resilience of your body.

What tests do we do at Connective Chiropractic?

You don’t need a referral to come to see us at Connective Chiropractic, so we are highly trained to locate problem areas through a series of tests and then come up with a working diagnosis to inform our care.

The tests we perform depend on your needs, though we tend to focus on tests that we need to do to proceed safely. These can include neurological, systemic, range of motion, postural and orthopaedic tests. They may sound scary at first, but we’ll guide you throughout so it is as comfortable as possible.

We’ll let you know the basics of what we find as we go through the initial consultation, but will present everything as a whole to you at our formal report of findings session the next time you see us.

Next steps 

We sometimes offer first adjustments or advice on our initial consultation session if there is a clinical rationale to do so. Either way, we’ll book in your report of findings session to go through what we’ve found in a bit more detail and properly get started. At this session we’ll let you know how many sessions we think it will take to help you and we’ll also offer you a care plan. We often provide a care plan discount offer that reduces the cost of treatment to lower than our standard pay as you go rate when paid in advance.

The report of findings session is included as part of your initial consultation and you do not have to receive Chiropractic care afterwards if you choose that it is not right for you.We try to keep the technical language to a minimum to make it easier to understand what we’ve found, what care is appropriate and whether there are any alternatives or risks to also consider. 

Providing healthcare information without Chiropractic care

As your local Chiropractor in Basingstoke, we are aware some people come to our initial consultation for further information or second opinions about what is going on in their bodies. Given we try to be as thorough as possible and make time to understanding your body as well as we can, we embrace this. However, we would ask that you let us know if this is your intention at the start so that we can provide a letter to your GP or present our findings in a way that helps you best.

Understanding the wider role of your Chiropractor in Basingstoke and your tailored care plan

We’ll be beside you throughout all stages of your Chiropractic care with us. As you progress through your agreed care plan, we’ll continually reassess how we are progressing in line with what we found and discussed at your initial consultation. We do this to inform our continued care with you, and to help you to make more informed choices about whether longer term maintenence or wellbeing care is in your best interests. As always, if you ever have any queries please feel free to contact us. We are all about helping people and transforming lives.

Version 1.2 – Last updated 20.12.23