Dec '25 • General discussion
Merry Xmas - With A Clinical/ Biz Tip
Hope everyone had a safe Christmas.
I’m currently sitting at a car dealership, waiting. Before I arrived, the front desk associate told me, “Be prepared to wait 3–5 hours.” I reacted with, “What?”—and he followed up by saying something I often teach my hybrid clinical and business students: “I just want to manage expectations.”
That response immediately stood out to me. It was smart, intentional, and clearly the result of good training.
It took me years in clinical practice to fully appreciate the importance of expectation management. If we fail to warn patients about what could happen, they often become skeptical, frustrated, and may even quit when something occurs that they believe “shouldn’t” have happened. In those moments, patients may interpret normal variability as incompetence.
For example, with SI joint rehabilitation, I tell patients:
“About 9 out of 10 patients get better within 5–8 weeks.
However, every year there are a handful of patients who take longer—sometimes several months—and I always warn people upfront.”
That honesty changes everything.
Not only do patients appreciate the transparency—especially chronic pain patients who are accustomed to being sold to—it builds trust. When rehab takes longer than expected, the process goes much more smoothly because expectations were clearly set from the beginning.
Managing expectations isn’t pessimism. It’s professionalism and save patients from quitting when they were in the right place
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Merry Xmas - With A Clinical/ Biz Tip
skool.com/whelton-methods-8514
For clinicians to learn diagnostics & Rx, root cause focused orthopedics & innovative methods from world renown physical therapist, Ryan Whelton, DPT
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