Palmer Launches Center for Business Development

Palmer College of Chiropractic's Davenport, Iowa, campus recently opened the Palmer Center for Business Development, designed to provide current students and new graduates with the skills to successfully run their own businesses. The center's curriculum includes modules that cover new practice design, finance structuring and business plan development, among other components.

The academic program is intended to supplement Palmer's standard Doctor of Chiropractic degree coursework. Students and alumni can learn from case studies, interactive workshops and guest lectures featuring successful entrepreneurs and business leaders from inside and outside the chiropractic profession. The program is free of charge for Palmer students and alumni.

The center's services are built around four pillars:

• Self-Discovery. This focuses on the administration of personality and strength assessments that will help participants identify how they might best make a contribution to the chiropractic profession. A professional coach will meet with students to discuss the kind of practice they would like to have. Coaches will help them make informed decisions about the direction that best suits their strengths.
• Business Skill Development. Experiential and practical modules are designed to assure that aspiring chiropractors have an opportunity to tackle some of the major hurdles that entrepreneurs face as they open a business. Areas covered include financing, marketing, real estate leasing vs. purchasing, front /back office procedures and exposure to options in practice management firms and office equipment and software.
• Career Development Center. The infrastructure that provides students and alumni with the education and coaching needed to successfully market themselves as chiropractic health care professionals. Particular attention will be paid to activities focusing on career counseling and matching services. The center also is developing and delivering state-of-the-art career education programming designed to assist aspiring chiropractors in their effort to reach their career goals as practitioners, researchers, professors or administrators.
• "Destination Success." This symposium is the foundation pillar for all of the center's business and practice management events.

While physically offered only on Palmer's Davenport campus, plans are underway to provide streaming video and Webinars of workshops to students on the west campus in San Jose, Calif., and the Florida campus in Port Orange, Fla. Palmer graduates interested in taking advantage of the services offered by the Center for Business Development should contact Marsha Hardacre at marsha.hardacre@palmer.edu. Business experts and chiropractors wanting to contribute their expertise should contact the center at (563) 884-5858.