An interesting article, appeared in the June 6, 2006 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic. It seems, according to the writer, that the AMA is up to their old tricks of trying “to contain and eliminate” chiropractic as a recognized health care service in the United States. The AMA has created an “entity known as the Scope of Practice Partnership to study the qualifications, education and academic requirements of ‘limited licensure health care providers and limited independent practitioners’ such as doctors of chiropractic, acupuncturists and naturopathic physicians.”
The AMA, through its executive vice president, Dr. Michael Maves, says that they recognize “non-physician providers have been, and will continue to be, important elements in the provision of health care…” The AMA just wants to “ensure quality care for patients.” It seems that 36 percent of all American adults used at least one type of complementary and alternative medicine in the past year.
I am not in a position to judge the ulterior motives of the AMA. The writer of the article, by comparing this endeavor with the AMA’s Committee on Quackery of the 1960’s, thinks they are once again out to get us. Perhaps he is right. However, I’m not sure that is the right tact to take with our medical brethren. That may have been their motive in the 60’s but a lot has happened since then: the anti-trust suit, the improvement of our chiropractic curriculum, standardized testing (national boards), a federally-recognized accrediting agency (CCE), and millions of dollars from increased tuition and grants to upgrade our colleges’ physical facilities. We have nothing to fear.
In fact, we should welcome this modern-day Flexner Report. It will give us a chance to vindicate ourselves in the eyes of organized medicine. We can prove to them that our graduates are as competent as the graduates of the best medical schools in full-body diagnosis. We can show them that the cases seen at chiropractic college clinics are just as challenging and prove just as much a learning experience for the chiropractic student as teaching hospitals do for medical students, that the internship experience at a CCE school is equivalent to the two-year internship of the medical physician.
Not only will we be able to prove our equality or superiority to medicine in the area of diagnosis, an art that both they and we agree is the essential prerequisite “to ensure quality care for patients,” but we will be able to rid the health care community of unqualified practitioners or at least cast a bright light on their dark back-alley procedures and inadequate training. This report will, hopefully, demonstrate that an acupuncturist does not have the training of a fully-licensed chiropractor. It will show that the physiotherapist is not qualified to manipulate the spine given the little training he has in technique. Perhaps we can put them out of business altogether. Our training in chiropractic school must be better than that in physical therapy. After all, we’re doctors, they are not. You need to have adequate, full-body diagnostic training to take care of musculoskeletal problems and we do.
We are as good as medical doctors and we can help them eliminate those alternatives that are not. We are now mainstream health care and its time we and the medical profession work together to safeguard the public by ridding it of dangerous practices. We are not afraid of any objective examination of our education and training. We are completely qualified and are anxious to demonstrate our expertise to the world. This is not the chiropractic of the last century. We are not afraid of comparing ourselves to medicine or even being judged in malpractice cases by medical doctors and their standards of care. We are now real doctors. We’re ready. Bring it on!
P.S. My editor insists that I say this article is entirely sarcastic. V21n4