Chiropractic's unmatched contribution to health care is unassailable. I know it, you know it and our patients know it, yet the public-at-large still understands little of the far-reaching and beneficial effects of chiropractic care! One hundred and five years later, our profession has failed miserably in doing enough to transform this country's fundamental beliefs about health and wellness as they relate to chiropractic.
Changing our national attitude about health is a worthy mission, one which must be embraced by every chiropractic organization and every chiropractor. Our professional goal must be more than mere survival. It must be to provide quality chiropractic care to every man and woman, in the world.
How Fear Has Hurt Us
The shift to managed care has frightened an entire industry. Doctors of chiropractic are scrambling around looking for answers, hoping beyond hope that we will not be excluded from new and pending national health care reform. Fears of reform eliminating chiropractic have been around for more years than I care to remember, yet it's still scaring some into abandoning the ship and finding alternative careers.
Why? This profession still believes that we are alternative care practitioners who are mostly insurance-dependent. We've somehow forgotten what chiropractic is really all about. There are even those among us who are attempting to influence national chiropractic consciousness toward the possible shift to becoming doctors of chiropractic medicine (DCMs). Whatever happened to chiropractic being a separate, distinct and unique healing profession that can, and I think must, stand on its own? Surely we want to be a self-regulated profession and not fall under the oppression of outside influences who know little and care less about who we are, what we stand for and how we can positively impact the health care world.
Our profession has been fragmented for nearly all of our existence. A profession that is fragmented in its purpose or philosophy usually becomes stagnant and loses whatever power is necessary to succeed. One century later, we still have two or three national organizations, and different associations, societies and councils in each state. Each group keeps trying to win the war; each sends conflicting bills to legislative bodies, who by this time are tired of our stale and outdated rhetoric.
Let the Silent Majority Step Forward
The national organizations only represent a fraction of all chiropractors, fewer than 10,000, I am told by reliable sources. We still label ourselves and have the so-called "straights" and the "mixers," the get- me-hospital-privileges-so-I-can-be-a real-doctor guys, a growing number of multidisciplinary practitioners, the manipulation-under-anesthesia faction, orthopractors, and now, the DCM faction.
It's time for us to see the bigger picture! A weak, ineffectual profession can't tell the world's patients who we are and what we can do to help them live a happier and healthier life. Our time has come I tell you! The year 2000 is our gate to the future.
We seek equality and the recognition we deserve. We want acceptance and respect, but it's not going to happen unless we make it happen for ourselves. It starts with "us changing us!"
Our total attention and focus must be toward unity in our profession. I believe that is the missing ingredient. It doesn't matter what the current leaders of our profession think. They are all great people who devote hours and hours of their precious time to our profession, yet they still passionately believe what they believe, and in their own minds, they are justified and right. So as a result, nothing happens. Each group, when individually polled, clearly comprehends the value and benefits gained from unification. Being smart is not their problem. They are all incredibly bright, but much like the rest of us, they get caught up in the very beliefs which they vigorously and passionately defend. Its is simply how they see things, and none of it, when looked at from all sides, can be construed as "wrong." They merely have opposing viewpoints, fostered by our traditionally fractioned chiropractic system over years and years. It originates early and stems from where they went to school; how and by whom they were taught; what model they used as the basis for their own practices; and how the practitioners evolved over years.
Focus on Our Common Values, Not Our Differences
One group says, "Yes, we want unity too, but we are 'principled' and 'subluxation-based.' We will unify when the other side limits their scope of practice and means of facilitation and comes over to our way of thinking." The other group says, "We want unity too, but we see an expanded scope of practice and want to use whatever means of facilitation techniques are available to help us get patients well, and by the way, we adjust subluxations too. Unity is also our goal, but it can only happen when your side comes over to our way of thinking."
I say, "Stop!" We've been singing that song for years and years, and regardless of individual beliefs, right or wrong, it doesn't work!
Legislators, whether national or state politicians, simply don't know what to do and can't decide which side or which piece of legislation is better for their constituents. So, they do nothing, and so we get nowhere -- again!
Two Major Issues
As I see it, there are two major issues. The first concerns chiropractic beliefs, which I've already briefly discussed; the other deals with the human condition and how individuals operate.
To have unity, it would probably be necessary for some of our profession to step aside and give up what they worked so hard to achieve for many years. Here is a simplified explanation of the process.
A practicing chiropractor joins a state association and then becomes a member of one of the national organizations. The chiropractor sings the song of the organization and learns the way of the politician until it becomes second nature and is indelibly ingrained. After years of effort and sacrifice, the chiropractor becomes president of the national association.
How naïve it would be to now ask the president to step aside and allow us to put up a new candidate who not only understands the game, but has the unification of the profession as a priority. I know, I know, it sounds crazy at best! Who among us would step aside? It would take incredible human beings to place the profession-at-large before personal achievement or recognition.
I also see this as a four or five-year project: a phase-in to unity. Why not select leaders from our profession and put them in a room with explicit instructions that they are not to come out until they have constructed "the plan that leads us out of bondage." Call it "Unity 2004."
We're still a profession that, when under attack, circles the wagons and shoots in. Only with a unified front can we send a clear message to our representatives in the legislature and to the regulatory bodies in our individual states, not to mention the patients we all serve. Surely in simplicity there is elegance and an incredible positive energy that unity would create!
No more straight publications or crooked ones, just chiropractic publications; no more fractionated state organizations competing for member dollars and attendance; no more ICA, ACA and WCA! Just a Universal Chiropractic Association representing all chiropractors, because we all agree on the enormous benefits of chiropractic. We are fighting the wrong enemy. Perhaps we need to heal ourselves first. Perhaps we need an adjustment!
Spectator or Participator
What would our profession look like if all DCs became participators and not spectators, unhappy with our results, but nevertheless free to complain anyway? What would happen if we all belonged to one of our national organizations? Perhaps in the future that should be become a prerequisite for licensure. Fifty-five thousand members paying $600 per year equals $33 million a year in dues alone. What kind of powerful legal representation would that buy? And with the million and millions left over, do you think it would be possible to finally create a worldwide public relations program that would effectively and properly brand and identify chiropractic as the natural healing art of choice around the world?
Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream," and I say that our profession needs to have a dream, too: a bigger dream ... a much bigger dream! We need to dream about the results we achieve and remember how it feels when a patient responds to care. We need to dream again and again about the miracles that have happened in our offices because of a "principle" that is unfortunately still the best kept secret in the world.
The civil rights movement had the dramatic power of Martin Luther King's leadership. He rallied people around a principle. Well, we have a "principle" too.
So, what do you say? How do you feel about unity in our profession? Certainly, unity must take priority over any and all self-serving interests. Don't you agree? Unity can be accomplished! Lets contact the leaders of our profession, by word of mouth, by fax, by e-mail, by carrier pigeon, but let's get the ball rolling ... right now!
Postscript: The opinions expressed in this article are mine and are not meant to disparage any individual or organization now attempting to do their best for the profession.
