Approximately five days after Hurricane Katrina hit the South, I was invited to go to Mississippi with a team of doctors from Yale and the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven, Conn.
I joined a team that was comprised of a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, a doctor of internal medicine, a pediatrician, an orthopedic surgeon, and a plastic surgeon. A shipping and supplies expert accompanied us.
After arriving in Gulfport, Miss., we were stationed at Gulfport Memorial Hospital. We had taken approximately $50,000 worth of medical supplies and medicine along with us, which had been donated by St. Raphael's and private physicians for this mercy mission. I came armed with a small portable chiropractic table. Later, we hooked up with three ENTs
from Missouri; like us, they were there hoping to give medical help where it was needed. We were able to acquire an ambulance and a box truck, which we drove approximately 170 miles per day, traveling from one Red Cross shelter to another, providing all types of medical care.
It was both a personal privilege and a great chiropractic experience for me. Half of my time was spent assisting the doctors I was with; the other half of the time, I was treating patients, including local residents, Red Cross volunteers and hospital workers. The amount of musculoskeletal injuries was vast. Many people who had lost their homes were sore from sleeping on floors. The volunteers and hospital workers who had been working without relief were also in need of my
services. It was remarkable - whenever I took out the chiropractic table, a line would form. It was a great feeling to have an opportunity to give to people who at this point had so little. Working alongside such a diverse medical team with all their support was an added experience that I never would have known if not for this situation.
If you're ever given the opportunity to volunteer in this capacity, I strongly recommend that you take time out of your life to give back. It is a life-changing experience from which you gain as much as you give.
Patients are no longer just searching; they are asking. Consumers increasingly use AI-powered platforms such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity to ask complete questions in conversational language. Instead of typing “chiropractor Miami,” patients may ask, “What is the best nonsurgical treatment for sciatica?” or “Who helps pregnant women with low back pain near me? This shift represents one of the biggest changes in healthcare marketing since the rise of Google itself.
The New Jersey Board of Chiropractic Examiners has made a precedential decision, concurring with the Association of New Jersey Chiropractors' (ANJC) position paper on chiropractic X-ray guidelines. In plain terms, the board ruled, consistent with the ANJC position, that insurance companies cannot use medical X-ray rules or recommendations, like those written by the American College of Radiology (ACR), to decide whether a chiropractor's X-ray was necessary.
The term standard of care is a legal term and a medical concept. There is no single, universally recognized standard of care document or authoritative reference. The medical concept defines what practitioners should do in practice. The legal term used determines whether a practitioner failed to meet that expectation. This article examines the standard of care for the doctor of chiropractic.
