The chiropractic profession is under intense external scrutiny in Australia – most would call it vicious attack. At the same time the divisions within the profession are no less vindictive and divisive than the disgusting campaign of hatred being orchestrated from outside.
I contend that we are a profession that has been progressively weakened by a substandard education system over many years and we have finally come to a time of reckoning. We are at a time where we must reassess our values, beliefs and purposes and directions.
Do we circle the wagons and continue to shoot inwards or advance the wagons, clean up our camp and shoot outwards? Don’t buy into any illusions – this is a war. It’s a philosophical war, a turf war and an economic war.
Medicine wants to have total control and dominance, it hates being beaten in the marketplace and chiropractic is doing just that. There are close to 5,000 chiropractors in Australia servicing an estimated 300,000 people a week. This represents a significant impact on drug company profits especially when you consider the lifetime value of the medical profession’s utopia, a person on drugs from the cradle to the grave.
My opinion is that the medical army’s strategy goes something like this:
- Foster fear and distrust in the public and the chiropractic profession by constant media exposure using sensationalised stories laced with half-truths, lies and false and misleading information. This should create significant division of the chiropractic ranks and maybe dry up some of the chiropractic client base.
- Through trolls and paid public agitators flood the chiropractic board with complaints about chiropractors.
- Wrestle away from chiropractic the access to children and place it solely into medical clutches.
- Ensure that all medical and physiotherapy university courses receive anti-chiropractic propaganda and make it unethical for these professions to refer to chiropractors.
- Force Health Ministers to override the chiropractic board’s jurisdiction.
- Intimidate the chiropractic registration board so that there is a justification to consider the chiropractic board incompetent and therefore force the amalgamation of the chiropractic board into a general therapist’s board controlled by medicine.
- Eradicate all chiropractic colleges and faculties in Australia and prohibit the registration of foreign trained chiropractors.
- Assimilate chiropractic techniques into a subset of physiotherapy.
This proposed scenario may strike one of two reactions with you.
One: It may sound like what you have always dreamed of. You can have a safe seat at the medical table with full acceptance and full access to government funds. This scenario has no material cost and requires you to do nothing.
Two: You may decide that it is time for passive victimhood to be replaced by proactive action not only by you but each and every person who is a stakeholder in the magnificent gift that we are custodians of – chiropractic. This scenario has many costs. The cost could be financial, personal reputation, right to practice and maybe even a worse fate.
I propose that if scenario two is for you there are steps that you must take as follows.
Firstly clean up your Chiropractic ‘backyard’ by
- Cleaning up your language. A separate and distinct profession has its own lexicon. (I will write an article on this next week).
- Cleaning up your technical skills especially in sensitive areas such as infant and child adjusting. Commit to constant improvement in these areas.
- Cleaning up your communication within your practice so that your practice members are well versed in chiropractic and the issues at hand.
Secondly, go on the front foot.
- Organise to flood the Medical & Physiotherapy Boards with complaints about their professions’ websites that violate the advertising guidelines. There is no excuse for double standards on this issue.
- Encourage people to submit complaints to the Medical Board regarding the many actions that Medical professionals are taking that is against best evidence or lack of evidence eg prescribing antibiotics for chronic ear infections in a child.
- Submit complaints to the Medical board of its professionals who are denigrating chiropractic.
- Encourage your practice members to share their testimonials of chiropractic far and wide.
Thirdly, invest you time and money and student referrals until it hurts, into Chiropractic Colleges that are committed to chiropractic values. The Australian Chiropractic College is one such college and it really needs your assistance to get started right now.
I think that maybe we have had it too easy for the last decade or so and now is the time to be tested. It is against the average chiropractors better self to engage in conflict but there does come a time when ideals, principles and indeed livelihood are worth fighting for. We are grossly under capitalised compared to our oppressors but never the less wars have been won against greater odds.
There are battle cries on the horizon – you are involved and it’s your choice as to what part you will play.
