FEATURE SUCCESS STORY LET’S FACE IT Opportunities to “specialize” in practice BY DR. SIDNEY LISSER P WITH FILES FROM DR. CHRIS OSWALD, COLBY BUCCI (PT) AND DR. BRETT GUIST 12 Canadian Chiropractor April 2020 www.canadianchiropractor.ca Photo: Courtesy of The Centre for Fitness, Health and Performance rior to writing this article, the question presented to me was: “How, as a chiro-practor, do you make in-roads with dental profes-sionals?” But, there is no answer to that. Instead, the question should be: “How, as a chiro-practor, do you differentiate yourself so that other health professionals will want you to be part of their patient care team?” This comes with a bit of a story. In 2002, I began my chiropractic career in “chiropractic general prac-tice.” I use the term “general practice” as that is what we see and hear in the medical and dental communities – general practitioners and general dentists. This often confuses me be-cause as chiropractors, we are all general practitioners. While we do have some specialties, like rehabilita-tion, sports injury, research, etc., there are no true specialists focusing on a specific part of the body, or a specific subset of the population with the ex-ception of the chiropractic radiology specialty. So I made myself into a true “special-ist.” My focus is in the mechanical re-habilitation of jaw and facial pain, even though I can’t use “specialist” as an official title. I use the phrase “special interest in” when discussing my work in with jaw and facial pain patients. I cur-rently operate The Jaw & Facial Pain Centre and have treated over 7,000 jaw and facial pain cases to date. Our team works and inter-refers with many of the hospitals, dentists/dental specialists, otolaryngologists and varying other medical professionals in the greater Toronto area to support patients with these conditions. During our process of growth, we integrate these professionals into an allied health clinic targeted solely towards the treatment and reha-bilitation of jaw and facial pain. A patient success story chronic pain she was feeling in her jaw/ face that we used on her back. I coupled the dental specialist’s support and knowledge with my ability to research and became more educated on the topic. I am happy to say that we, as a team, were able to successfully resolve her long-standing jaw and facial pain. I asked the dentist, “Since we had such great success, would you be will-ing to refer me other patients so I could try again?” I took this opportunity to refine my methods for treatment and continue to grow my knowledge. Sub-DR. SIDNEY LISSER is a Chiropractor with a special interest practice in jaw and facial pain. He is the sequently, the dental specialist contin-Clinic Director of The Jaw and Facial Pain Centre in Toronto, ON. ued to refer more and more patients. I saw my first facial pain patient in 2002. She was a patient referred for chronic mid back pain from a dental specialist that our clinic had success-fully helped with his own pain. In her history she noted she had seen 56 health professionals for her pain, and I was number 57. She had had short term relief, but little long-term suc-cess. Fortunately, I was able to help her where others had failed. The real issue was not that she had a compli-cated problem, but that many of the rehabilitation practitioners who treated her initially failed to use the best practices available and relied on non-researched and incomplete treat-ments. As a result, the cascade of re-ferrals began, she was pigeonholed as a pain patient with somatic disease, and she bounced around the system until she was referred to my office. Following the success of her back treatment, the dental specialist asked me to look at her jaw/face and wondered if we could apply the same practices to the Dr. Sid Lisser treating a patient with facial and jaw pain.
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor April 2020: Page 12
