What Do Chiropractors Do?
What Do Chiropractors Do?
Chiropractors are best known for doing spinal adjustments. While that’s an important part of what chiropractors do, it’s only part of the job description. As a Doctor of Chiropractic, you’ll support patients’ health in all sorts of other ways. A more complete list of what chiropractors do would include:
- Conducting thorough physical, neurologic, and orthopedic examinations.
- Counseling patients in areas such as diet and nutrition, fitness and exercise, personal hygiene, occupational safety, and many other behaviors and habits that affect overall health.
- Performing or prescribing tests to measure health factors and evaluate degrees of function and impairment.
- Bringing patients into the health care system, performing initial assessments, establishing treatment plans, and making recommendations for ongoing health maintenance.
Chiropractors may also specialize in subdisciplines such as orthopedics, sports medicine, radiology, pediatrics, or gerontology. And many chiropractors do ongoing education for patients, community groups, chiropractic students, and other audiences.
In most cases, adjustments remain among the core treatments that chiropractors provide. But the range of conditions that chiropractors treat is more varied than most people realize.
Below are some common myths about chiropractors and the corresponding truths about how chiropractors help patients.
Myths About What Chiropractors Do
Chiropractors only treat back pain.
Actually, chiropractors treat the whole body, like any doctor. Although chiropractors routinely address pain and injuries to the back, neck, and joints, they also offer preventive care and maintenance related to exercise, diet, fitness, aging, and overall health. The most important thing chiropractor do is to equip patients with the knowledge and insight to take charge of their own health.
Chiropractors aren’t guided by science.
At Texas Chiropractic College, we teach chiropractors to use evidence-based techniques that have a track record of results. Like doctors in any healthcare specialty, chiropractors constantly test hypotheses and gather evidence about new methods, then use the outcomes of those experiments to modify treatments and get better outcomes.
Chiropractors are isolated from the broader healthcare system.
One of Texas Chiropractic College’s key strengths is our integration with other branches of medicine. We teach chiropractic as a mainstream discipline, and we prepare chiropractors to work in concert with other medical providers. Partnerships between chiropractors and other healthcare professionals are increasingly common. Many doctors regularly refer patients to chiropractors to avoid invasive testing or treatment, to mitigate costs, or to avoid drug therapies that may produce side effects. Likewise, chiropractors often refer patients to other professionals for specific health issues that fall outside the regular type of treatment that chiropractors offer. TCC’s partnerships with major research hospitals and health systems enable students to develop collaborative approaches to comprehensive, integrated health treatment.
Chiropractors lack rigorous training.
Most chiropractic degree programs last 3+ years, making them comparable to medical or dental school. They include extensive clinical training that provides chiropractic students with hundreds of hours of supervised hands-on experience. Like doctors, nurses, dentists, and other health care providers, chiropractors must pass certification exams to demonstrate mastery and qualify for a license to practice. And to maintain their license, chiropractors must meet annual requirements for continuing education.