Being a doctor of chiropractic is great fun, but sometimes things get a little… awkward. Here are 11
really awkward moments (in no particular order because they all stink) every D.C. knows pretty well:

1. Running into a patient on the street and you draw a blank on their name (but it’s SO easy when you have their chart with their name in it open in front of you!)

2. Flip the script and you run into a patient on the street and you say hi and they don’t know who you are!

 

3. You give a great adjustment and it pushes a little air out of the patient’s tummy. You know what I’m talking about… this is especially awkward if you start laughing before your patient starts laughing! If they laugh, go ahead. If they pretend it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen and that’s the official story and you’re sticking with it!

DELETE 4. You fill out the best chart note of your life only to find out that you put it in the wrong patient’s chart. Cut/paste, my friend!

5. You have two patients with the same name and you open up the wrong chart and as you’re talking to the patient it’s clear she has no idea what you’re talking about.

6. You ask your patient to take all the metal off/out of their body that they can before an x-ray and you shoot the x-ray and you see some… private… areas with piercings … Bonus points on awkwardness when the patient points it out and asks YOU what that is!

7. A patient comes in with an aggravated lower back/shoulder/anything and you ask what they were doing when they aggravated it and it turns out to be some pretty exciting bedroom activity! But, in all fairness, you DID ask and we DO actually love patients who are totally honest with everything!

 

8. The patient tells you their right arm/leg/whatever is the problem and you spend five minutes examining the left one before it hits you that you’re on the wrong side.

9. Here’s one from my own early days in practice… you’re running a massager on the patient’s upper back and you suck a bunch of their hair into it and get it all snarled up and it takes you 45 minutes to untangle it. When the patient gets up and asks you how it looks, you of course say, “Fine!” even though you’re staring at a real rat’s nest in their hair.