DC's Interview with Dr. Guy Riekeman

DC: Dr. Riekeman, you have just been named the new president of Palmer College. Congratulations. Would you give us your vision for the college?

GR: My vision for the college would also be the vision that I hold for the chiropractic profession. It would be like two matrixes laid on top of each other.

I believe that chiropractic needs to move itself into a new dialog, on an educational level, on a research level and even on a professional political level. This goes beyond chiropractic just being used as a method for treatment of specific conditions. We have a wide range of arguments regarding what the scope of chiropractic practice should be. Should it be for neck and back pain only, since there's so much research and outcome assessment in that area? Should it be for other all conditions? Should it include therapy or non-therapy? Should it include relationships with medical doctors?

I think that's a dialog that's gone on in our profession for a long time. And that dialog, while an important one and one that still needs to be carried out, has caused us not to be focused in on other issues. For example, what about the long-term effects of subluxation on the person's overall health even on non-symptomatic people -- what lay people would call `prevention'? And of course, there's the evolving area of wellness care.

I believe that we need to create a new dialog that not only answers the questions relating to the problems that we're involved in now, but begins new discussions within our profession, our education systems and our practices. I believe some people are trying to carry on those discussions now, but don't know how to do it. I believe the profession can do it, but it must begin to dialog into the areas of prevention and wellness care.

So the first vision that I would bring to Palmer would not be to expand the education. I believe the education incorporates those ideas at least on a philosophical level as it does at most schools. But how will we apply those ideas in the clinic? How will we apply those ideas to new research dialogues?

I don't believe, for example, that chiropractic will ever be fully proven on a research level if we restrict the dialog to the treatment of conditions. I believe that our dialog has to involve a dialog on health, which would be, how can we measure how the body is functioning and how well can we measure the body's ability to adapt to it's environment?

Until we have research tools to measure those kind of things, I believe the outside world's view of chiropractic will be a very restricted one, probably little more than neck and back pain. So the first vision I have for Palmer would be how do we take that idea and incorporate that into the educational process, into the research process, and into the clinical process?

The second thing that I think the chiropractic institutions are dealing with today is: is our job just to train a technician to go out and perform various health care services, or is the job of an educational institution to expand the knowledge of the profession? I happen to believe the latter of those two. And I know that at Palmer, one of the things we're going to do is to start talking about, how we train educators. How do we train them to go out, not only to other chiropractic colleges, but how do we send educators throughout the world?

I think that we need to build an organization and this will be part of our agenda as we look down the road at Palmer. We're going to train leaders that can be applied to various fields of health care. How do we train researchers? I think that in addition to teaching chiropractors how to be successful in individual and group practices, we're going to be looking at how to expand the knowledge of the profession. How do we expand the knowledge base in the educational process to do more than just train technicians?

DC: What changes will your presidency bring to Palmer?

GR: On the short term, one of the things that we need to do is to change the organizational structure so that it can meet the needs of all of Palmer's constituencies. Whether they be students, faculty or alumni, they will have more direct input into the process, into the vision and how to best implement that vision. So I see some organizational changes that will bring the educational institution in line with contemporary thought. Palmer will become a more effective organization where people have input, rather than a hierarchial structure where, by the time their voice is heard, it has little impact. So we're going to squeeze down the organizational structure. With each of our constituencies, the alumni, the students and the faculty, we must make sure that they're absolutely clear on what the vision and the direction is for Palmer and be willing to, as a family, support moving the institution into that direction.

DC: If you could accomplish just one thing during your presidency, what would it be?

GR: If I could accomplish one thing, it would be to establish chiropractic is the leader in a new dialog about what health care should be beyond just the treatment of disease. I would want to establish that dialog both for doctors and for their individual practices. Particularly, I'd want to show them how to do it with their patients, which I've been doing for two decades. I'd also want to do that for the Palmer Institute and the chiropractic educational institutions.

The third area I'd want to concentrate on is outside the profession. I'm very hopeful that the Palmer presidency will have an active voice in the health care discussion outside of chiropractic.

DC: Is there anything else you'd like to share to the profession?

GR: Yes. I know that there has always been this "in-fighting" going on in chiropractic. I'm not one of those people that think that kind of dialog is bad, if it's conducted in a productive way, looking for outcomes that will improve the profession and the practitioners. I do think that currently the dialog is often done to elevate ourselves or our individual organizations above someone else while putting them down.

If I had to say one thing that I would like to bring to the profession and to Palmer, it is that we can have a dialog that looks for greatness in each other rather than just trying to establish our own greatness at the expense of someone else. H.G. Wells once wrote an article on human rights and sent it to Gandhi, asking if he would endorse it. When Gandhi refused, Wells asked, "Haven't you always been a supporter of human rights?" Gandhi replied, "Never. What I've always supported is human responsibility. If you have an organization or a country where everybody is looking for their rights, you'll always gain right at the expense of someone else's. What I've always been for is that whatever rights you have are gained by what responsibilities you've taken on."

So one of the things that I would love to see happen is that we have a discussion about our responsibilities in this profession, not just our rights with insurance companies, or our rights with government agencies. We need to have a discussion about our responsibility to the consumer and to health care. From that we'll gain whatever rights our profession deserves.

Finally, there are probably some people who are concerned about the image they have of who I am. They may see me as an entrepreneur or some kind of philosophical guru. Or, they might be concerned about what kind of vision and direction I'd bring to Palmer. My comment to them is, "Come participate with us in our programs, at homecoming, and see what we're up to. You're going to find that it's much bigger than an entrepreneur or an educational institution. You'll see that what we're going to be doing at Palmer is working to make the chiropractic profession great, as well as make our students great and able to practice successfully."