In my personal opinion, I think these kinds of steps are what the profession needs to grow. To be "doctors" we need training in modern medicine. We cannot help our patients fully unless we have a greater arsenal of tools to pick from. I am not saying we should throw a pill at every patient that walks through the door or even contemplate using pills as a first line treatment. I am saying we could be more respected if we were given more training in such therapies. And, if we think about the time that is lost between shuffling patients here and there to GP's and specialists, we could potentially help a ton more patients and retain them for future services.
It is kind of weird writing blogs on these things while being in 4th quarter. I still have 8 more quarters left of school before I can have an "official" voice as to how things should be. I will use this blog later on when I am in practice for patients to read if they want to learn about chiropractic or the education we obtain.
Continuing on, I honestly think the profession is messed up. We want to be PCP's and argue about what a DC actually is. Why not define a DC as the person who will prevent disease and the person who prevents unneeded orthopedic surgery. As we have learned, preventing disease to some DC's is as simple as keeping the spine straight. Hence, the name "straight chiropractor".
There was a movement back in the 90's of a group of DC's, DPT's, and DO's who wanted to define their skills in manual therapy to public. They knew the public had been misinformed by a number of DC's who made false claims in regards to health in order to make a ton of money. These fraudulent DC's painted the entire manual therapy profession in a negative way which raised concern with a group of manual medicine doctors who kept running into professional discrimination in the public. Even though they came from different medical schools of thought they all had and still have one thing in common. They practice manual medicine. In this context, they bonded together and formed a multidisciplinary society and defined manual medicine as Orthopractic. Their goal was to be recognized publicly as a safe, medically based alternative to chiropractic. Being that chiropractic, as a whole, had caused numerous accounts of fraud and skepticism due to unscientific practices, this new approach defined the manual medicine doctor's profession and increased public acceptance as a specialty within medicine.
In Canada, Orthopractic still exists. I cannot find a good source for a US based orthopractic society or foundation of any sort. The idea is awesome though. It is one that I am going to try really hard to emulate as I believe the public still views our profession with skepticism. Our profession is misunderstood and given a lot of negative hype due to the stupidity of a few straight DC's.
With that, I commend the straight DC's for their goal of keeping folks from using medicine. I think their efforts to keep people off of mainstream pharmaceuticals is commendable. I don't agree with how they define health though. Their definition is misleading and takes the blame off of the patient's back for their ailment.
It seems to me that if we want to be doctors who retain respect in the community we must do something to create public acceptance. And not just locally so WSCC can reap the rewards. I am talking nationally, even internationally. We have the power to make change happen.
We will never be a cohesive bunch. We have fought for over 100 years as to whether to follow a medical model or a pseudoscience model. Something has to be done because, I am investing a shit load of money into this and a ton of time, as are many other students. I have contemplated jumping ship to Osteopathic medicine only for their public acceptance and unity as a profession. If we want to be the example of what good evidence-based manual medicine should be, then we should be making ourselves known by not allowing any sort of straight-talk to occur. By straight-talk, I mean pseudoscientific bullshit. Tie the school into medicine somehow, stand for something rather than accept any mindset.
Enough already.
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