Question
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Followup To
Question -
I am currently student preparing to enter Chiropractic College.  I am kind of confused about all of the different Chiropractic Colleges.  I have narrowed my choices down to a few.  I was wondering what are the differences between all of the colleges, especially between the straight and mixer schools.  I am aware that there are differences, but I am not sure if I understand the advantages or disadvantages of which education.  For example, many people swear that the only and best school is Palmer, while the people at WSCC mock and belittle the college as though it were an inferior school.  I am thinking about several different schools right now, but am most strongly considering NYCC and Cleveland in Kansas City, and those are mainly for location.  I really just want to get the best chiropractic education available, but am not sure that there is that much of a difference.  It seems to be more of a means to an end kind of thing.  If you could give me your opinion I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time,

Brandon
Answer -
Brandon,

I completely understand your confusion.  Basically what is happening is that you are hearing propoganda (false or misleading information) from both sides and don't know what the truth is.  According to one article "more than half of the chiropractic college's make unsubstantiated claims for clinical theories or methods on their web sites" (Sikorsky, D.  "The unsubstantiated web site claims of chirpractic colleges in Canada and the United States", The Journal of Chiropractic Education, Vol 17, No. 2, 2003.  

The colleges specifically listed as making false claims were:

Cleveland Chiro College, Life West, Life University
Southern Cali Univ of Health Sciences (LACC), Palmer, Parker, and Sherman


There is also a tendency to believe that they are all the same and just go to the most convenient one (location).

There are essentially two types of chiropractic schools with a totally different level of education. Subluxation based schools disagree with the CCE requirement to teach students to differentially diagnose their patients and have a curriculum that is segregated, they separate diagnosis courses from the clinical internship and teach students only to use a "subluxation analysis" to diagnose patient complaints. This is the traditional chiropractic approach and is common however it is dangerous because it promotes misdiagnosis and overutilization-setting a student up for charges of health care fraud and malpractice. One DC named Gallagher attended a sub based school and proceeded to treat a patient with epilepsy who then died under her care and was given a prison sentence. http://www.chirobase.org/16Victims/gallagher.html . Sub base programs really violated accreditation standards which require course integration. If you look at their curriculums notice the placement of geriatrics, pediatrics and obstetrics courses, you will see they follow the start of the clinical internship. This is the tip off that students are seeing patients without diagnosis training. In addition to the training the accreditor doesn't regulate treatment approaches so many disproven techniques are taught and many false claims made (such as correcting misaligned vertebra and removing nerve interference).

Evidence based programs teach students the same diagnosis as medicine and are much safer. However their flaw is that they also teach wacky treatment schemes.

As a profession, chiropractic is too limited and corrupted by pseudoscience to be any good.  Right now it is in major decline and unlikely to rebound.  

A much better (but more lengthly) choice would be osteopathy. See www.chirobase.org site for more information.

ajb
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Hi-

I just read your response to my question, and I have some others now.  What Chiropractic School did you go to?  Why did you want to become a chiroprator?  and, from your response, you seem very bitter towards the profession.  What made you become such?

Thanks,

Brandon

Answer
Dear Brandon,

>I am currently student preparing to enter Chiropractic College. I am kind of confused about all of the different Chiropractic Colleges. I have narrowed my choices down to a few. I was wondering what are the differences between all of the colleges, especially between the straight and mixer schools. I am aware that there are differences, but I am not sure if I understand the advantages or disadvantages of which education. For example, many people swear that the only and best school is Palmer, while the people at WSCC mock and belittle the college as though it were an inferior school.

I'm not surprized, this is a complicated area to understand.  There is the truth and then there are the false beliefs held by the straight schools and the mixer schools.  The truth is that they are all wrong.  Vertebral subluxations are not correctable by adjustment.  So the entire basis of both mixer and straight programs is faulty.  This is why I don't recommend you attend any chiropractic program.

As for the mindsets, the mixers believe that the straights are ignorant and ineffective because they receive less training in diagnosis and don't allow students to diagnose conditions in the clinical experience.  The straights believe the mixers have sold out to medicine and are wasting their time learning medical diagnosis.

So my advice is not to attend chiropractic school and do something in real healthcare not alternative medicine.

If you would like to talk to more chiropractors visit the http://chirotalk.proboards3.com/ discussion forum.