Before the First Adjustment
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How much information does an experienced chiropractor actually gather before the very first adjustment?
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HODA-A™ Clinical Insight Series · Publication 004
Before the First Adjustment
Why better assessment matters more than better adjustments
Dr Jo Abbott, PhD — Clinical Biomechanist · Anatomist · Clinical Nutritionist · Independent Musculoskeletal Researcher
How much information does an experienced chiropractor actually gather before the very first adjustment? Not just through history-taking, imaging or orthopaedic testing, but through the remarkable sensory system that develops over years of clinical practice — and that almost no practitioner has ever been taught to examine, train or refine.
In this fourth publication of the HODA-A™ Clinical Insight Series, Dr Jo Abbott draws on eight years of doctoral research into a question every hands-on profession depends upon, yet almost nobody has scientifically explored: how do skilled hands become a measurement instrument?
Written for chiropractors, associates and students of chiropractic, Before the First Adjustment examines the clinician as instrument — how attention, expectation, hand use and context shape what we feel; why experience alone is not calibration; and why the reliability literature on spinal palpation asks the wrong question first. Its central argument: before we test reliability, we must stabilise the instrument.
It also engages honestly with the conversation around high-velocity techniques and the cervical spine. Rare but serious complications remind every profession that technical skill is only one part of safe practice — observation, pattern recognition and knowing when something doesn’t fit are the quiet infrastructure of safety, and they can be trained. Every adjustment begins long before you touch the patient.
Includes written feedback from HODA-A™ Level 1 participants, selected further reading, and an introduction to the Level 1 Perceptual Calibration Certification — including private team cohorts for groups of eight or more, well suited to multi-practitioner clinics.
Format: Free PDF download · 10 pages · may be shared in full and unaltered
Series: HODA-A™ Clinical Insight Series, Publication 004
Published: July 2026 · © 2026 Dr Jo Abbott
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