Finding Magnetic North

By assuming a role in health care comes a degree of responsibility to achieve goals in some way. But in what way? As a Chiropractor what guides your decisions and provides parameters within which you operate?

If you have no guide how can you know what a goal is, or for that matter, when you arrive at your desired destination in encounters with your patients? Quite simply, you can't.

So, what is it that we offer? Is the goal to make patients 'feel good'? If that is truly our goal this opens a world of 'good feeling' things you can do for them. You can tell them how special they are, compliment their hairstyles and how the rest of their peers are relatively insignificant in comparison to their greatness. That might very well 'feel good' for them by bolstering their self-image and their psyche. You might provide services that 'feel good'. I have seen these large machines that look like human dishwashers at events in Chiropractic. Maybe that might 'feel good'. Of course there was the Chiropractor in California a few years back that was charged with running a prostitution ring through his office. He may have had a clientele that would pay dearly for 'feeling good' in his office. Is that what you became a Chiropractor for? To prostitute our profession? None of you did--that is ridiculous.

Then what sets parameters for application of what Chiropractic 'is'? In my area of Illinois there was a Chiropractor who would pour a molten wax-like substance in the ears of his patients. After it hardened he instructed them to leave the matter in their ears. That was it. No spinal analysis, no Chiropractic adjustment...nothing else. This may sound strange, but when I was a youngster my father had a sciatic type of pain in his legs that grew so bad he had to use crutches to walk. For a carpenter, this was not a functional possibility. As a carpenter, there are no 'sick days', you either work and earn a wage or you don't. One of the fellows he worked with said, 'Frank you need to go see a Chiropractor'. He looked in our phone book and found the nearest one was about 20 miles away in Joliet. (Interesting that now there are 11 within a mile of our old house.) This DC did nothing but enemas. Needless to say, he went ONCE and thought they were all nuts. I have had patients come to me after spending thousands of dollars for a short term of care from a DC's office and never get an adjustment. From one office, I know none of them ever see a DC after the first visit. Is this Chiropractic? No? Then what defines your task and the tolls at your disposal?

Both of these are determined by how Chiropractic defines its philosophy. There is no doubt we can see the need for a philosophy to guide our actions, decisions and also our hands. So, we need one. But what is it?