As a student interning at Missouri Orthopaedic Institute (MOI), a hospital system offering chiropractic care to its patients, I, along with (I assume) many of you, have existed under the assumption that while education is a facet of our practice, it represents only a small fraction of our responsibilities.
Education: Expanding the Understanding and Scope of the Profession.
More specifically, patient education, while a crucial part of both informed consent and good clinical practice, ensures patients understand our role in health care. This includes how and what we treat. However, it often feels as though this responsibility extends only to our patients.
How do we improve?
I believe this presents a significant oversight. We may not be doing an adequate job of informing our fellow practitioners on the allopathic side about what our scope and degree truly entail. As a result, physicians and nurses may not feel comfortable referring patients to us–or presenting chiropractic care as a viable option–even for those who may be excellent candidates.
I want to be clear: this gap is not always due to malice, negligence or self-interest. After working with many of the physicians and staff at MOI, I have seen firsthand how patient-centered and empathetic their care is. If even in this environment there are small gaps in understanding regarding the role chiropractic can play. I can only imagine how much greater those discrepancies may be in non-interdisciplinary settings, where allopathic and chiropractic medicine as disciplines are often completely separated.
Taking Responsibility.
For many years, stigmas surrounding chiropractic care have persisted. Often, they are unintentionally reinforced by health care professionals who may not have been introduced to the profession by chiropractic physicians themselves. It is our responsibility to help move the profession forward and ensure more people have access to chiropractic care, starting with education. How can we expect to be seen as a necessary member of a patient’s health care team if our role is not clearly understood by the other members of that team?
This is my second-to-last post as the NUHS-Florida chiropractic student blogger. With only three weeks until I graduate, I felt it was important to reflect on this topic, as just one of the many lessons I will carry with me from my internship. Chiropractic, as a profession, is continuing to move forward through evidence-based practice and is becoming more widely accepted because of it.
With that progress comes responsibility. I urge each of you to take ownership of that responsibility. Not only by providing high-level care to your patients, but by actively educating both your patients and your colleagues. By doing so, we not only strengthen individual outcomes, but also solidify chiropractic’s role as an essential part of modern, collaborative health care.
