Sunday, December 9, 2012

A Chiropractor Retains Professional Standards

By Dr. Len Schwartz


Every chiropractor has a responsibility to live up to the professional training that he has spent time energy and money to obtain. Although he may do this faithfully there will still be people who decry his work, claiming that he is nor a 'real' doctor. This has been the scenario since the early twentieth century, but in recent decades there has been a much greater degree of acceptance.

Perhaps due to years of discrimination great efforts are put into preparing people to practice this profession. Entry qualifications and the difficulty of examinations can always be raised to ensure the reputation of any profession. However, this must be set against the demand for services. Lower back problems probably increase proportionately with how much people sit at desks and drive motor cars.

There were probably traditional practitioners in China employing techniques such as acupuncture effectively when bison ruled in America. Traditional Chinese medicine has also been dismissed by Western academics but has survived due to public demand. People who are suffering from some ailment are mainly interested in relief. This can put them at the mercy of quacks, but the search for relief can sometimes be found outside conventional medicine.

There are sound reasons behind medical ethics. Doctors often hold lives in their hands at critical points and therefore the public feel the need for them to be trustworthy. They are also entrusted with intimate bodily details and the need for them to preserve doctor patient confidentiality is important because things that transpire in doctors' rooms are among the few private areas of life still respected.

To safeguard itself from allegations of quackery the profession has to take action against people who call themselves chiropractors without being well qualified or trained. On the other hand it needs to counter the arguments of some conventional doctors that it is not up to scratch as a profession,

Chiropractors are not alone in their struggles with recognition and qualification. For example the teaching profession has never settled its issues with professionalism satisfactorily. Many believe that the most important teachers in any individual's life are its parents, yet there are entirely unqualified and the prospect of offering formal education in parenting is fraught with ethical and practical problems.

There is nothing to stop people laying hands on each other to stretch and manipulate the skeleton in efforts to relieve pain and disjoints. One bumptious sports coach had a method of hugging players who complained of sore backs. He would grasp them in a bear hug and lift them from the ground. In some cases he turned minor injuries into chronic ones that lasted for years. There lies the rub. A line must be drawn between well meaning fools and people who do know what they are doing.

Among highly qualified and duly registered professionals there remain divisions. One chiropractor might be holistic in his approach, seeing the spinal column as the seat of many different bodily complaints, and even emotional ones. Anther might prefer a more specific approach. He will focus his attention on straightening the spine where it has become displaced and go no further.




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