Health Insights Today
Caring for World-Class Athletes and Everyone Else
Interview with Jeff Spencer, DC
Interview by Daniel Redwood, DC
If I ask you to pick out the most satisfying case of your exceptional career, which would you pick?
The one that comes to mind is my first Tour de France with Lance. It was before the first stage of the first race of the Tour began. He was warming up for the event, and about one minute before he had to start the event, he called me into the warm-up area and said, “My back is killing me! Is there anything that you can do?”
I knew immediately what I needed to do. I had him get off the bike and I put him down on the floor. I gave him an anteriority adjustment to his thoracic spine, and he jumped up off the floor, gave me the thumbs up, and went out to win the stage.
Pretty satisfying!
It was one of those magic moments where I wish that time would stop and I could reflect on it and duplicate it in every moment of my clinical life. That was certainly a great validation for the profession and it also spoke volumes about the confidence they had in me to be the practitioner for the team.
Please describe a typical day in your practice.
I’ll begin by saying one word—chaos. There are so many things that I have to deal with, such a wide breadth of clinical conditions that I deal with in my practice. It really begins with my preparation in the morning where I begin with my own exercise routine. I spend a moment with myself, dedicating with purpose what I will give others that particular day, so that I go in with a mindset of service to others. When I go in there, I make sure that all of my equipment is where it needs to be. I thoroughly look at everyone that I will be seeing that day and have a tentative strategy so that I can be mindful of what I will be doing. I also have room for those that may show up unannounced. I work until the day is done, put everything away, and then start “Ground Hog Day” once again the next day.
The important thing is that you have to be really clinically organized, to make sure that during an office visit you cover all of the different categories that are necessary, so that you have a comprehensive visit where you neither over-treat nor under-treat. And that at the end of each visit, you’ve given the patient the homework that’s appropriate for their needs until you see them at the next visit.
What advice do you have for chiropractic students who would like to work with athletes?
I would say to be an athlete yourself so you really understand the athletic experience and learn the vocabulary that athletes respond to. It tells them that you know what you’re talking about, which instills incredible trust between the athlete and the practitioner.
Number two, I would make sure that I have very good mentorship and that I spend time in an office with a doctor that spends a lot of time with athletes. To get a sense of what the conditions are that you’ll be dealing with in practice, and also developing clinical skills to be able to build your clinical knowledge and clinical skills while you’re going through the curriculum in college. Also, to attend seminars of your interest and to read books and interface with colleagues in the areas that you’re interested in. You need to be committed to being a lifetime student of the discipline. Because you never know enough and there are always new revelations that come along that require that we all remain active students in our discipline.
The thing that is most important is to provide the greatest service possible to the people that come to us and entrust themselves and their legacy to our decision making. To do what we need to understand the body from a global, holistic perspective. Because if we try to make a patient fit our technique, then we’re probably not going to be very successful over the long term, because every person’s body and presentation is different. It is really important to become a master at evaluation diagnostics and to have a wide breadth of tools in your toolkit to address the personalized needs of the patient.
Daniel Redwood, DC, the interviewer, is a Professor at Cleveland Chiropractic College–Kansas City. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Insights Today and The Daily HIT, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and Topics in Integrative Healthcare.
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