Massage Client Interview
The Massage Client Interview is your chance to connect with your client and understand their situation. It can make the difference in how the session goes and whether or not they come back. It is part knowing the correct questions to ask and part knowing when to ask the questions. It is also about learning to listen to your client. Listening to someone intensely enough so that they feel heard will take you big strides in connecting with your massage client.
The Massage Client interview will help you to assess the clients physical situation as well as their emotional and mental state about their interest in healing. While massage therapists are not trained in dealing with the emotional and mental states, it is important to observe massage clients state of being.
Gathering information is the basis for assessing your clients needs and being able to create a session plan for them and an ongoing plan. Massage therapists are of course not allowed to diagnose conditions but they are allowed to assess. Assessment is collecting and interpreting information from the client as well as any other parties involved such as a doctor who has referred the client or a parent if the person is under age.
Having this information will help you to know first off if this person is a candidate for massage and secondly to help you provide the best massage service for the client. If you are able to focus on the needs of the client your chances of success in working with the client increase as well as the chances that the client will become a repeat client. It is part of the process of building trust with the client and setting the therapeutic relationship in place.
Clients will often be coming in the door still thinking about work, their travels, their families and whatever else is currently going on for them. They may be a little nervous about seeing you especially if they have never had a massage at all in their life. They may be wondering if you will be able to help them achieve their goals or help them with whatever issue they are having. Having a effective website can help you to start building trust with people by telling them right off some of the things to expect and educate them about the process of massage and how the muscles work.
Giving a client your full attention may also require that you take time in between clients that you need to process your own thoughts and get them out of the way. It may require that you set up your appointments so that you have enough time to do that with say 15 minutes in between sessions. It is also important to arrive for your appointments on time or earlier to prepare for working with clients. If you are late to a client or are distracted when a client arrives it is one of the first things that a client will see which could lead to them being slightly defensive or untrusting. Making a good impression is important.
Doing a thorough intake will depend on what information you need to make a good assessment to begin your massage work and make every massage a Great! massage. The client interview is where you go from problem solving to building a solution with the client. When the client is involved in their own care it can be very empowering in itself. Many massage therapists have a tendency to want to make the massage session about themselves. They do that by thinking that they already know what they are going to do before they have gotten all of the information that they need.
Peter De Jong talks about empowering clients in his book “Interviewing for Solutions”
Empowering clients means ‘helping people discover the considerable power within themselves, their families and their neighborhoods. (Saleebey 1992)
In order to do that with clients it requires setting aside your own agendas as much as possible while you explore your clients needs with them.
Listening is the key. It is difficult to listen without reacting in any situation – business or personal. On one hand you are asking questions and trying to listen but also you start evaluating when you hear clients begin to tell their story. One thing you can try actually is to pause 5 seconds after the client speaks to let your thoughts stop and to make sure you really listened. It is also difficult to set aside all those things that you learned in massage school that you may be thinking about from the moment the client walks in.
Learning to listen is a process in itself. It requires that the massage therapist feel listened to first so that they can set aside their own thoughts during the interview process and be more present with the client. Supervision is one of the best ways to get that listening first and feel heard yourself. In doing so it can help reduce your reactions and your need to give advice and “fix” everything. It is part of our nature to want to be helping but often helping is hurting more than it actually helps.
Mirroring the client by just repeating back to the client what you heard them say is a great way to begin to learn to listen and also just in doing that a person can feel validated. It allows them to connect with their own thoughts and feelings about the situation and allows them to come to know themselves more. Peter Jong in “Interviewing for Solutions” recommends focusing on their strengths and not the negative things that they might be saying.
Diana Thompson in her book “Hands Heal” says this about client interviews:
A deep and meaningful relationship, productive for both the patient and the practitioner, is the primary goal of the interview process.
The interview process can often start when they are looking at your website and checking you out. The therapeutic relationship actually begins before that – when the client is just thinking about getting a massage so the client/massage therapist has already begun even if the massage therapist is not aware of it yet.
To be a good listener it requires practice and as I said before – feeling that you are heard yourself. Turn off your phone and any other distractions. Turn off the music. Talk face to face with your client on the same eye level. Make direct eye contact but don’t stare. Watch their bodies as they talk and notice the non-verbal communication that happens all the time. While you may be talking about symptoms it is often the feelings that will tell you more about what is going on. They client needs to feel listened to and feel validated. It isn’t about analyzing them or going outside our scope of practice but it is important to understand how people feel about whatever is going on with them.
Reflective or active listening is the process of telling clients what you heard (or saw or felt) around their situation. Often people will not be in touch with their emotions. Reflecting back to them in a compassionate way can help them in their healing process.
The intake form is one of the best ways to begin the interview process. While there are many pre-made forms out there to help you start, I would suggest trying to create your own form to ask your own questions in the way you want them to go.
It may also be helpful to inform the person about why you are asking so many questions and how it will help you in your massage session.
If you are working with injuries or health conditions you will need to focus your questions on the symptoms to begin with. This often gets the person talking and opening up so you can know what to ask next. Find out when and where it hurts or what things make the pain better. Use pain scales to get more direct answers so that you can compare them before and after the session to show the client their own improvement.
The first part of the massage is also part of the assessment. Your hands are really the best tool to see what is really going on. It is also where you begin to put all of the information together to create the best massage possible for each client.
Another thing to consider in your client interview session is the amount of time it takes to do an effective interview. The first time a client comes in will be much longer usually. You will have to take that into consideration when setting your fees for massage and scheduling your appointments. You can add extra time onto the massage session and ask the client to come in 15 minutes early for filling out the forms and asking questions or you can make it part of the session time. You can also have the forms on your website and have clients download them and fill them out to bring with them to their first session to save time.
Resources for Massage Client Interviews:
The Balanced Body: A Guide to Deep Tissue and Neuromuscular Therapy with CDROM (LWW Massage Therapy and Bodywork Educational Series) (3rd edition)
Basic Clinical Massage Therapy: Integrating Anatomy and Treatment (Lww Massage Therapy & Bodywork Educational Series.)
Foundations of Massage
Articles Online
Medical Conditions in Massage Practice: Intake Forms and
Questions, Part I By Tracy Walton, LMT, MS Massage Today
Medical Conditions in Massage Practice, Part II: The Client in a Physician’s Care By Tracy Walton, LMT, MS
Medical Conditions in Massage Practice, Part III:
Interviewing for Medications By Tracy Walton, LMT, MS
Share your comments or information on how to interview massage clients.
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About this author: Julie: 23 year veteran in the massage profession who turned writer/blogger/creator of many websites - www.massagebusinessjournal.com, www.thebodyworker.com, www.massage-career-guides.com, www.massageceguide.com , www.wa-massage-therapy.com ,www.massageschoolnotes.com |