Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor

Editor’s Note: May 2006

By David Stubbs   

Features Business Management

No matter how individual DCs perceive and practise chiropractic, all
are subject to the currents of thought moving through the collective
national consciousness.

No matter how individual DCs perceive and practise chiropractic, all are subject to the currents of thought moving through the collective national consciousness.

Present-day trends in this country are reflected in private health care rearing its head in the form of a few non-public, user-pay medical facilities in our big cities.  Newspaper ads appear that list groundbreaking treatments and state-of-the-art technology on offer just across the border, for those with the means.  Other larger patterns are also emerging, such as those observed by Dr. Stan Gorchynski, president of the Canadian Chiropractic Association, interviewed in this issue.  There is a universal thrust to reduce health-care costs while improving patient outcomes, and an increase in the number of health-care providers in multidisciplinary settings.

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Though some might argue, chiropractic represents one piece of the health-care continuum, albeit a unique one.  Other practitioners also play their role.  If you fall off a roof, breaking bones and lacerating organs, for example, you will most likely immediately want to visit the emergency department.

If you seek to experience wellness, you will construct a lifestyle that allows for balance in all components of your being.  Dr. James Chestnut emphasizes that optimal health is a result of eating, moving and thinking in alignment with our human genetic blueprint.  A wellness expert, he says, must personify lifestyle choices that promote the expression of homeostasis.

There are excellent illustrations to show how chiropractic is partnered in collaborative projects, such as the one at St. Michael’s, an inner city hospital in Toronto, and another at one of Canada’s largest military hospitals in Halifax.

An innovative employee program (Wellness@Work) at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital bases its comprehensive holistic approach on the individual’s physical, mental, spiritual, financial, social and cultural dimensions.  The hospital’s manager of organizational health and wellness is a chiropractor, Dr. Cory Ross.
If you talk corporate wellness, you have to know the lingo.  In their article, Drs. Richard Earle and Derek Lee fill us in on the real results that companies are looking for, and this entails much, much more than setting up a chiropractic adjusting table in the work environment.

Dr. Joey Dimerman describes for us his multidisciplinary wellness clinic that is located in Thornhill, Ontario.  Husband-and-wife team Drs. Jamie Neely and Laina Shulman note that, as their patients start to feel better through chiropractic, they are inspired, in many cases, to make lifestyle changes.  Who do they look to for guidance?  Their chiropractors.

The next few years will reveal how chiropractic can harmonize with either the institutionalized, collaborative health-care model or the wellness clinic model – or both.  It will also become clear if chiropractic as a profession can retain its distinct art, science and philosophy.

A wonderful invitation is offered by organizers of the Canadian Chiropractic Convention, coming up November 16 to 18, 2006 in Vancouver, for chiropractors to come and share knowledge and perspectives with each other, irrespective of their differences.  After all, no profession is entirely homogenous.  As an extra enticement, early-bird registrants for the conference are being entered in a draw for cash prizes.  At the event, one lucky attendee will win a fabulous cruise for two in a draw co-sponsored by ChiroCruise and this magazine.

In the words of Dr. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries, those who act without boldness as well as kindness are courting failure.  “You’ll never get ahead until you start advancing,” he says.  What, according to him, is the motivation to get going?  “Wanting more out of life.”

Isn’t this an impulse that continues to strongly surge through both chiropractors and the people who turn to them?•


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