This review is of the chiropractic work of Kathy Dooley…read more
Kathy is very skilled at the assessment work of chiropractic, though I've since found a chiropractor whose work in this area I prefer, so I won't readily recommend her for this.
I can't speak to Kathy's hands-on work as she did not adjust me during our session.
Where Kathy's work is dearly lacking is in her interpersonal skills and her ability to communicate clearly with clients, which in my view, are an equally important aspect of effective health care.
After my first session with Kathy, which went well and during which we had gotten along great, I did my exercises for a month. She had not adjusted me during the first session, leaving everything to the exercises. This was fine with me and I thought everything was going well until my low back started acting up. I became incapacitated by pain and reached out to Kathy for advice. This is where the professional relationship began to fall apart.
First, she was dismissive of my fear around the pain, which had never quite gone away since our first visit and was new to me. She merely told me, literally, "don't be afraid just keep doing the exercises," with no further explanation or reassurance that doing the exercises would in fact alleviate the pain eventually.
The next unfortunate development came when I asked her a clarifying question about one of my exercises. I was forced to ask for clarification several times because she never actually answered my question. She became obviously frustrated by this and instead of considering her answers and attempting to be more clear, she began including passive aggressive statements in her emails to me to the effect of "I'm explaining this but you're not getting it." She very obviously made no attempt to adjust her own response for clarity or even consider that it could be anyone's fault but mine.
And finally, after a few back and forth emails of this nature, without any prior warning or requests from her for different behavior from me, she ended our relationship. I felt abandoned and betrayed, frankly, by someone to whom I had entrusted my health and who was so quick to refuse to see me again simply because she could not manage some questions.
I did make the effort to reach out with one final email to offer my willingness to overcome the misunderstanding and continue our work together, to which she never responded.
Kathy's behavior with regard to my care was unprofessional and childish, demonstrating a clear inability to self-reflect or set personal boundaries. I would have been happy to cease emailing her or to continue the conversation at an office visit if she had requested it but she chose to refuse to see me again instead.
Luckily, she referred me to Urban Wellness (the one thing for which I am grateful to her).
Additional issues I had with Kathy include:
The worksheet of exercise explanations she gave contained language like, "DO NOT posterior pelvic tilt and lose lordosis to gain glute contraction" and was obviously not written for lay-people, which seems to be a pattern with her communication.
She charged me for my session a full month after we met, without letting me know in advance. For many freelance artists living in New York, it is important to know when I'm going to need to have $250 available in my account for a transaction and an unexpected one throws off my monthly budget. Yet another failure to communicate or consider the needs of others.
If you are a professional athlete who wants minimalist attention and needs little explanation or follow-up, you're likely Kathy's ideal type of client. But if you are a lay-person with chronic pain who needs a chiro who will explain your exercises in detail in a way that you can understand and know how to reassure you when you're frightened about your pain, I would look elsewhere.
I didn't work with Kathy long enough to speak to the efficacy of her practice, though I do believe it is likely effective. I will say, however, that after leaving Kathy's office, I felt no better than I did when I'd entered, and after a month of doing her exercises, I entered a low-back crisis. Whereas, I went into the Urban Wellness clinic with debilitating low back pain and walked out feeling 1000x better, in addition to going home with exercises to do, as well as postural advice that lead to immediate relief of my low back, guidance for inquiring into my thyroid health, a follow up appointment scheduled, my bill clearly paid, and an explicit request to follow up with any questions, via email or phone, at any time of day.
A truly great chiro understands that pain can be emotional and that excellent care is of the whole person and not just the muscles, bones, and tendons.
