Featured Clinic

We regularly showcase, for your enlightenment and pleasure, different clinics chosen for their individuality, purpose,systems,beauty or functionality.These facilities range from boutique solo practices to large multi doctor offices. We would appreciate you assisting the profession by having your clinic featured in these pages. Please contact johnh@powerful-practices.com

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PLATINUM CHIROPRACTIC
By Dr Matthew Hodgson
Erina, New South Wales, Australia

I graduated in 1996 from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. I had a passion at the time for mountaineering and so I headed straight for Europe to practice. I travelled around England, Ireland and Scotland doing locum work and spending as much time as possible in France in the Alps ice climbing and mountaineering. I would work for a month and then go climbing for a few weeks. I was working on the north coast of Northern Ireland when I was involved in a motorcycle accident. I was severely injured. I was unconscious for almost a week and in intensive care for almost three months. I fractured my spine at T5 and ended up with a spinal cord injury and paraplegia. I fractured most of my ribs and my lungs collapsed, I developed pneumonia and had to be ventilated to breath. I tore open my stomach and had to have this surgically repaired, I smashed my knee caps and had those removed, I fractured my jaw and had a metal plate inserted. I ruptured my spleen and almost bled to death. The lucky thing was being in Northern Ireland where they were very used to multiple injuries and so I was lucky to survive. So I was heavily sedated, had a machine breathing for me, a tube to feed me and my jaw wired shut. It was a very traumatic time.

A local Chiropractor Kevin Proudman found out about me and came and adjusted me three times a week. The support I got from the local Chiropractic community was incredible.

I then had to go through the process of trying to deal with my new situation. Initially my first challenge was to sit up without blacking out. Then it was to learn to dress myself, shower and become self reliant again. I had to learn how to drive with a hand control and realize that a set of stairs, let alone the mountains I used to climb was now my biggest obstacle.

It took twelve months of hospital care before I was able to get home. I was offered a position at the New South Wales University in Sydney, back home in Australia.  This is where I had done my bachelors degree to teach anatomy. So initially I taught visceral and neuroanatomy to medical students. Then as my strength improved I took up a position at Macquarie University, Centre for Chiropractic, as a clinical supervisor, supervising final year Chiropractic students in their assessment of people from the public. I still had a burning ambition to get back into practice and so I went around to various Chiropractors to get advice about what I could do to fulfil this. I had amazing support from so many people that in the end I felt that I would be letting them down if I didn’t get back into practice. I ended up looking for rooms to start to practice out of and found that a local medical centre had a room available.

We put a desk in the “Reception” and I bought an adjusting table, a chair and a plant. Our first day myself and my mother (my new CA) opened the doors made ourselves look very busy and saw one patient and went home. I was on my way! The end of our first month we saw 30 patients that week.

To say it has been a steep learning curve is an understatement, however,  but it has been amazing. I really did nothing but work for the first three years. I didn’t take a holiday (something I wouldn’t recommend now), I ate, slept and breathed Chiropractic. But I did it the hard way; I didn’t delegate. I did everything from marketing to clerical, to accounts, to cleaning and most of them I didn’t have any experience in. So a huge lesson was to stand on the shoulders of people who have done it before like Drs. John and Judy Hinwood at Powerful Practices. Use their experience so that you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.

I did get to the point where I thought I needed something else in my life other than Chiropractic. I started to look around for an interest. Now the first thing you get told about when you have a spinal cord injury is wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis. The problem was I was hopeless at these sports before my accident! Why would I be any better now? So I avoided those. I tried wheelchair track racing, microlight flying and tennis, however I wasn’t really excited about those. I then heard about sit skiing. So I headed down to the snow with Disable Wintersport Australia for a weeks skiing and I was hooked from day one. I was independent, I could do it as well as an able bodied person and it got me back in the mountains as well. Not only that, but on that first trip I met a wonderful woman. Lorna was an English girl who had been a professional skier in France for ten years. We found we both had a passion for the mountains and had travelled to a lot of the same places.

We just got on very well. We met the week after in Melbourne and quickly became a couple. We moved in together the next January and as it turned out my CA fell pregnant soon after and so Lorna decided to “fill in” (little did she know what she was letting herself in for). We found that the practice flourished having someone with ownership over the practice.

Our practice really started to grow so we began to look for a new premises.  As it often happens when you set a goal, the perfect brand new development was underway 500 metres down the road from us. So we then began to travel around Australia to observe the most successful Chiropractors for how they worked and what their offices were like and so we modelled them and designed our new office around them.

In July 2006 we opened Platinum Chiropractic Erina on the New South Wales Central Coast, an hour north of Sydney.  Our clinic now is a place I love to go. It has beautiful leather lounges, is open plan, has a great kids area, our own x-ray, enough space for health workshops for 40 people, a projector that has constant health slide shows running , we have three CAs and we are looking for a new associate. We had a record week last week and saw over 300 people. So if I can do it sitting in my wheelchair, there is no reason why any other Chiropractor couldn’t as long as they have the right advice.

My life now is pretty incredible when I look back to how I was immediately after my accident. As I sit here I’m looking at my new 2 week old baby son, and to be honest, it can’t get much better.

So if you’re ever in Erina on the Central Coast, stop by.  We would be love to see you.

Dr Matthew Hodgson

Archives of the previous Featured Cliinics are posted in the members area. For as little as US$9.95 you can purchase an online streaming audio and instantly become a member of powerful-practices.com and gain full access to the entire members' resources.