I was recently searching for something to do with Chiropractic and I “googled” to see if I could get there faster. In the initial line up was a title “Chiropractors are not real doctors.” I perused some of the articles never actually getting into the meat of any warning or sarcastic insult into the education or training of a Chiropractor and decided to post this blog entry. No, Chiropractors are not Medical Doctors(MDs), but we are real doctors in the truest sense of the word.
The word doctor has become synonymous with medical doctor. Merriam Webster defines it as amongst other things: “teacher” and “a person skilled or specializing in healing arts; one who holds and advanced degree and is licensed to practice.” All applicable to a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic.
I especially love the definition of doctor as teacher.
Most of my time spent with patients is talking to them about body signals and figuring out what the body may be telling them. This is a dual effort to help them understand that symptoms are the body’s way of getting their attention that something is wrong and to tap them into the amazing healing potential of THEMSELVES.
Amazing healing potential can come at a cost though. Yep, you need to feed your body good food, you need to exercise, you need to manage stress and you need to have your spine checked for subluxation.
Prevention is a term that this health care reform is going to become top of the mind awareness for every health care practitioner-including Chiropractors. I’m going to bet that a new area of medicine is developed called a PMD or preventive medical doctor. Prevention is already my specialty!
I respectfuly disagree with your explanation regarding chiropractors being called Doctors. To me it is just a matter of having a big ‘ego’. The education for chriropractors is no close to a MD or a PHP degree. You would serve the profession and your patients better by being humble and just call yourself other than a ‘doctor’. Do Chiropractors really believe that patients consider them doctors? Just a respectful thought. Thanks
Wow, is spite of being distracted by the misspellings and anything but a “respectful thought” my first thought when reading this comment was: Did you actually read the post?