FACES is an acronym for Freedom, Adventure, Convenience, Effectiveness, and Security.
Freedom
Chiropractic is all about FREEDOM. Freedom to express yourself. Freedom to choose who you believe about how to handle your life and health. Freedom to decide your own path to health and happiness.
Freedom also has to do with wisdom and knowing when to handle something yourself and when to enlist the help of another. When you do enlist help, wisdom tells us to to trust and listen to. It ignores all others and understands that it is our own beliefs that matter most. Freedom is know that what we believe will be, will be.
Adventure
Life is an adventure. It’s full of twists and turns, ups and downs, pickles to get out of and heights to behold.
When we go hiking with the kids, it’s often for an afternoon. We hike the trail, take some pictures, enjoy some laughs and then we’re done with it. When mountaineering, especially at great altitude, the climbers set up a base camp and over successive days hike to the next camp elevation, spend a few hours there, then hike back down. They’ll do this over the course of a week or more for each higher elevation, hiking up, spending time then hiking back down as their bodies acclimate to the new elevation. Then over the course of a month or two or three, they’ll decide when to reach their summit, often times for only an hour before they begin their decent back down.
Oftentimes, life can be like that.
Convenience
You know what drives me nuts? Going to a doctor and waiting in their reception room for 20 minutes after my appointment time, then being brought into an examination room and waiting for another 20 minutes, then seeing the doctor for two minutes and waiting another 20 minutes for the nurse to dismiss me. We have to schedule over an hour, often take a half day or more away from work for a two minute appointment. It’s the epitome of inconvenience.
We strive for walk-in face time with the doctor and minimal wait times.
Effective
Any care delivered has to be effective. I remember when I had my shoulder operated on, I was told six weeks in a sling and about 6 months of rehab. I understood that was an estimate and reality can be different as we are all different. It gave me great confidence every time I went in and was told I was on target. Baring set backs, neglect, and outright stupidity on my part, if I was told 6 months and it took 12 months, how effective would I consider the therapy? On the contrary, if I was told 6 months and it took 3 months, how effective would I consider that therapy?
Everyone wants as short a time as possible to recover, but we as doctors have to be real and provide reasonable estimates for care having met someone only once, not knowing how productive a healer you are. We prefer to err on the side of caution than aggression.
Security
A healthy life is a secure life. We all know that our health with fluctuate. We also know that when we do the right things, we get the right results. That to me is security. Knowing that if I am doing something wrong, or there is something I can do better, I can make a change and improve. That gives me great peace to know I have an element of control.
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