In October 2014, a study was conducted to assess how medical
students perceived chiropractic and how their views changed—if at all—after a
one-hour educational course. The study group used a 52-item survey and formed a
study group of students in their third year of medical school. They tended to
believe that chiropractic was not safe or effective and overall had negative
views of the practice. The majority of the students didn’t make any effort to
learn about chiropractic outside of their school curriculum. However, 81.0% of
them thought that interprofessional education between medical doctors and
chiropractors was important and were interested in learning more about
chiropractic.
After the 1-hour intervention, the attitudes of the medical
students improved. The focus group (made up of 6 medical students) wanted the
opportunity to shadow a chiropractor and receive feedback from the chiropractor
and his or her patients. They also reported “a lack of exposure to chiropractic
in the formal curriculum,” though they had heard negative comments from faculty
members during informal lectures or small groups.
Though the focus group students agreed that the 1-hour
course was useful and educational for them, they believed that it came too late
in their academic career; it would’ve been more effective in changing their
opinions if they were exposed to chiropractic from the beginning of medical
school. According to the researchers, “[their] findings suggest that an
educational session is able to improve the attitudes and knowledge of medical
students towards chiropractic immediately after the session. However, a number
of concerns are held by medical students that should be addressed in a broader
scale to facilitate greater understanding of chiropractic.”
As you can see from these findings, it was largely their
lack of exposure to chiropractic in medical school that made the students so
reticent to recommend or be confident in the results of chiropractic care. It’s
important that this practice changes and medical students are taught about the
benefits and proven results of chiropractic before entering their professional
careers. If they are, medical doctors and chiropractors can work together in a
more collaborative, respectful way.
If you’re interested in reading further about the study, you
can access the article at the following link:
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