We Need Change and We Need It Now
Dear Editor:
I read Dr. Carter's letter in the 7/15/2011 edition. I thought it was well-written and I agree with him. I have been practicing for 30 years and have never seen utilization of chiropractic go up. It has slowly eroded over the years. Now with the recession, workers' comp reform, low reimbursements, large co-pays etc., things are definitely not on an upswing.
I do not recommend chiropractic as a career. The public has not bought our explanation of the "subluxation" and we have been talking about it for 106 years. I have been talking about it to my patients for 30 years. Patients come to me for pain relief and if they do not get relief quickly, they go elsewhere. We do need a unified profession wiith clear research data that shows what we do works and lowers health care costs.
My feelings about the New Mexico chiropractors who want a larger scope of practice is to let them have it. The more tools we have to help our patients, the better, in my opinion.
I had the privilege of being a part-time clinic instructor for eight years at a great college and I have great sympathy for our new graduates. In my opinion, we do not need a lot of new chiropractors at this time, as the numbers just do not support it. My solution would be a unified profession with a clear voice of what we do and how it can benefit potential chiropractic patients. I, for one, am tired of being in the back of the health-care provider bus.
Ken Lawver, DC
Manteca, Calif.
Where We Should Be Going
Dear Editor:
In a recent letter [May 6 edition], Dr. Robert Merrihew asked for every DC to write their view of our future and where the profession should be going. Well, I would like to get my 2 cents in, so here goes:
It is difficult to be optimistic about the future of chiropractic unless some drastic changes take place to create more opportunities for DCs to make a living. There are not enough salaried jobs in chiropractic for the high number of chiropractors seeking them, and business loans are hard to get if you have no money and a ridiculously high debt (as many chiropractic school graduates have). And try starting a practice on a shoe string budget. It is practically impossible and chiropractors typically don't make it doing house calls, mobile visits in a trailer or renting small, unprofessional-looking office spaces on the wrong side of the tracks.
It seems we have not gained the acceptance we deserve. We need quality research to back what we do and the public needs to be educated about chiropractic. One thing we don't need in chiropractic is prescribing medication. How absurd that would be: to make us another osteopathy profession. Our prime function is the adjustment of the spine and that is a skill we need to own and be the elite performers of. We need to gain enough acceptance to be adjusting newborns in the delivery room and elderly in the nursing homes, as well as adjusting the majority of the population on a regular basis.
If every DC in the country were able to adjust their share of only 20 percent of the population on a regular basis for wellness care and get reimbursed a reasonable fee, there would not be any chiropractors struggling to get by. If this were the case, none of us would have the need to do PT and other non-chiropractic stuff. We could simply get back to our roots and just be chiropractors.
Edmund Geswein, DC
Lompoc, Calif.
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
Spearheaded by burgeoning scientific and clinical research literature, psychedelics have reached a level of media coverage and popular interest that has not been seen for over half a century. By “psychedelics,” we are referring to the unique class of substances that includes psilocybin (the active compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”), LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline – each of which occurs in the natural world (except for LSD, which is a semi-synthetic compound).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
