Initial Perspectives For Professionals – D.C.

From my perspective, chiropractic, in 2005, is now looking back at its first decade during which it has responsibly, dramatically, moved into professionalism. That is a great achievement. As certain curricula – Los Angeles Chiropractic College as a model – have evolved in developing unparalleled academic standards, and schools are graduating students far better trained, including in what had been considered (by me, as well) purely medical subjects, the health care world, it appears, has entered a chrysalis for  transprofessional retransformation.

All that stated honestly (Any of you who know me know that I never flatter) and accepted as reality, the real world of patient care remains a poor and confused place regarding many of the common painful conditions. During this same time, the wounds of past histories continue to propagate the problems as we are only in the beginning of interprofessional intercourse - for traditionally trained physicians in general to understand clinical applications of biomechanics and how to relate with you – and for you to generally relate well with us.

In Release From Pain, I fully describe my decades of involvement with your profession. Dr. Frank Schoenholtz’s chiropractic Foreword expands on it. In 1984, twenty-one years ago, I was one of the speakers at the Harvest Moon Festival, in Los Angeles, a widely attended chiropractic recertification course. One of my topics regarded how chiropractors could better relate to members of my profession. There were over a thousand chiropractors in the room when I stated that before that could happen chiropractic first had to define itself. Chiropractic then was more a cloud of indefinite proportions, easily distendable to what anyone, or virtually any small group, might decide to put into it. I got a standing ovation. As I have now stated, chiropractic has achieved a high goal, but what that will mean in the scheme of foreseeable medical progress is not completely clear.

However staggering may be the pace of change, it may still take decades before the common patient experience will be satisfaction at the promptness and precision of their care, especially in the treatment of pain conditions, many of whose appropriate treatments are known today – as many of you are aware. How cooperation and blending will occur – what might eventually emerge from the chrysalis…

The vast majority of chiropractors practicing today are the products of an earlier era. Regardless, as the sorting happens, all professionals of good faith, whose honest pride derives from reaching for the ideals of what care is about, will immensely influence the progress and solidity of any bonds that form.

Again, at the Harvest Moon Festival I was introduced to the podium as “a friend of chiropractic.” My first statement into the microphone was that I wasn’t.  You could almost hear the air exit the room. I paused sufficiently, then explained that I wasn’t a friend either of “medicine” or “dentistry” but what I wished was to be a friend of any professional who exerted to help people who came for care in trust. That was my first standing ovation. It is a good memory. I wish that it was a dominant one in my experiences with chiropractic, but, in truth, it isn’t. Now, from this vantage, I look with excitement and curiosity to see how much of this will work out in the time I have (and may it be long).

Please read Release From Pain. Please be “one of the good guys.” Please realize that your profession is now on an early crest from which you may contribute critically and broadly to the provision of near idealized care.

There was a time I somewhat playfully paraphrased another statement and said, “If God knew what medicine would be like, he might have made people different.” In medicine today, the ignoble remoteness in care that so commonly exists, the abuse of technology as idolatry because learning hands on familiarity with tissues was aborted with the schism, the tragic ignorance about biomechanical fundamentals, the vast practice of writing of platitude prescriptions, all express helplessness where chiropractic is now finally constructing its substantial foundation. The cause of the Pain Pandemic is medicine’s fault for its lapse. Medicine’s essential, admirable contributions desperately need to be blended with what I will call the potential for the new chiropractic contribution.

I am now in a position to begin to look back. I see almost fifty years of commitment (of which, frankly, I am proud). I am preparing this website as my legacy, the same as why I wrote Relief From Pain. Please examine it. I think you will want to read it. There is valuable content for you. Then, I hope that it will assist you to continue your progress and become part of the social solution so that “medicine” will be able to provide what people expect when they seek help. From that, I hope you will be able to do your own looking back not from a (mean) ‘I got mine’ attitude, but with the pride that you also strived to leave this place better than you found it.

You can be part of it.

Be well. Reflect. Truly, all of our times here are short. Nothing is more important than leaving behind a good name.

PHG