Ergonomics

• Have a chair that supports your back properly with adjustable arm rests
• Use Wrist supports for your keyboard
• Have the keyboard at the right level (where you do not hunch your shoulders)
• If you have disabilities requiring you to have the keyboard at a non optimal level, find other ways to make sure your arm and wrists are supported; take frequent breaks
• Use a flat panel LCD monitor if possible (much better for your eyes)

Finger, Wrist and Forearm Pain

• Stretch your fingers out. Use your other hand or an inanimate object to give you a stretch
• Supporting your elbow (wither with your other hand, a desk, table, pillow, etc), rotate your forearm in a circle in both directions, with your fingers lightly leading the motion.
• Supporting your wrist, move your hand in a circle in both directions, with the fingers extended, lightly with ease leading the motion.
• Stretch your hand backwards.
• Shake your hands, in a circle, from sided to side, and back and forth, with your arm dangling at your side
• Stretch each finger backwards
• Move each finger in a circle in both directions at the knuckle joint. Occasionally, do each joint of the finger, gently; the movement with be very slight; hold the joint of one finger with the other hand and jiggle the finger. Do each finger and each joint. Jiggle in circles, gently but vigorously
• Tap your forearms and hand
• Squeeze your forearms and massage your hand and fingers

Shoulder and Neck Pain

• Turn your head from side to side and notice how it feels. Move your head in a circle (rotating), within your pain level, in big circles and small circles (you access different muscles), in both directions
• Turn you head to one side, and with the opposite hand rub and tap your stretched neck to your shoulder. Do the same for the other side. Tuck your chin and bring your head to your chest as far as possible within your pain level. Tap on the back of your head and neck with both hands. Look up toward the ceiling and stretch your head back as far as you can within your pain level and gently tap and massage your throat. Turn your head from side to side and notice that how it feels. Looser?
• Gently massage your face, stroking with your hands outwardly (opposite of squinting) and also gently moving your fingers in little circles on your face. (moving outwards, again)
• Move one shoulder in rotation in both directions, paying attention that you are moving it down and back in your circles (many people tend to hunch their shoulders and hold them forwards) Rotate the other shoulder. Rotate both shoulders. Turn your head from side to side.

Other Movements

• Move at the hips in a circle in both directions
• Move your feet and legs in opposite circles in both directions at the knees
• Move you feet in rotating motion (same direction and then opposite directions) in both directions at the ankle, do together and one at a time.
• Use tennis balls on your feet and back. Place a tennis ball under your feet and roll it around on the floor with your feet exerting pressure, all over your foot. Place tennis two balls on either side of your spine at the lower back and push against your chair and move, wiggle some. Do the same for the balls at your mid back level.

Reducing Eyestrain and Curbing Progressive Myopia

• Breathe and blink (put a sign at your computer)
• Look in the distance, out a window every 10 minutes for 30 seconds. Llook at the sky or the furthest thing you can see.
• Be conscious of your body posture and tightness and relax. Move slightly, shake. Are you clenching your jaws? Let go!
• Palm. Try palming and tightening you eyes for two slow breaths, then letting go for three or four slow deep breaths. At first tighten very strongly, and then less and less. This helps you realize when you eyes are strained and your face is tight before eyestrain or a headache develops..
• Massage your face
• Massage your jaws and move jaw in small circles

By self-healing.org

SoundPractice.Net has a free podcast on finding the right office staff. It caters to the MD crowd, but there are few interesting points in the 20-odd minutes.

Perhaps even better, there are over 100 free podcasts on the same site...

SoundPractice.Net - Podcasts for Medical Practice Management and Health Care Administration

(For a full list of all the podcasts, check out: http://www.mpmnetwork.com/page.cfm?name=featured_content )

CAMLAW has a new post on the "acceptance" of complementary and alternative medicine by the AMA.

While I'm sure many of you didn't need the blessing, it does provide more ammunition for getting more referrals from MD's who have been reluctant to "buy in" to your modality, or who are nervous for liability reasons.

CAMLAW : Complementary And Alternative Medicine Law Blog: American Medical Association Supports Alternative Medicine

At E-Myth Worldwide, you can complete a short questionnaire that ranks your business on a few different scales.

While the results are generally geared towards getting you to buy E-Myth products and services, the questions themselves and the simple results might get you thinking.

dan

PS - For those wondering what the E-Myth is, I'll put a review of Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth Physician, up in the next few days.

It’s one thing to understand the types of referrals, but quite another to know which type is growing your practice. I've touched on this briefly before, but I want to stress it further.

Tracking your referrals is actually pretty straightforward, but often neglected. For the most part, it’s a front-line job, and needs to happen the first time a patient arrives. The easiest way to do it is to make it part of your intake form. It’s very difficult and far less accurate (and less likely to happen) later on in the patient cycle. The great thing is that it's easy to implement - if you've got staff, just make it part of the new patient process. That's it.

If you’re using any type of software to run your office, there may be a place to enter this information. If not, a spreadsheet will do just fine. Even a piece of paper will work, but it’s a lot harder to do the math at the end of the quarter or year.

You can use the 5 referral type framework to categorize your new patients, each with a sub categories:

Professional

• Break this down by profession – chiropractors, naturopaths, MD’s, acupuncturists, TCM practitioners, etc. – and then even further by the actual professional (Dr. Jones, Dr. Ahmad, J. Doe, etc.).

Patient

• List by patient, and enter into the referring patient’s file as well, so you know when you see a patient who they’ve referred recently. It’s quite helpful to jot this on the inside cover of their file so you can see it as soon as you open it, and thank them on the spot for recent referrals.

Promotional

• Again, this can be categorized by print, other media, speaking engagements, internet, etc, then broken down further by the actual magazine, paper, website, etc.

Purchase

• Patient files you’ve bought. If you’ve purchased from more than one source, list them separately

Personal

• Family, friends, etc.

In a future post, we'll take a look at how this info can be used to help you grow faster and spend smarter.