Our Chiropractic Education

We wanted to take this week’s blog to discuss our chiropractic education.  There are an ever-growing number of chiropractic programs world-wide, with the most being in the United States (18 universities and colleges).  The North American schools (including 2 in Canada) are graduate-level programs, meaning that students must complete a minimum of 3-4 years of undergraduate education in the same basic health science prerequisite classes (Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, etc.) as Medicine, Dentistry, and other health science fields.  Once those are completed, students then apply to chiropractic graduate schools to study towards a Doctorate degree in Chiropractic (D.C. stands for Doctor of Chiropractic).  The other international chiropractic universities primarily offer Masters programs in Chiropractic, which is also a quality education.

The Netherlands currently has no schools offering a chiropractic education, so all of the local chiropractors have received their education elsewhere.  On a side-note, there is no regulation in the Netherlands controlling who may call themselves a chiropractor or D.C., so if you are interested in visiting a chiropractor, it is wise to check his/her education credentials to ensure that he/she is, in fact, a properly trained and educated chiropractor.

Ceci attended Palmer College of Chiropractic – West in San Jose, California, while Thomas studied at Southern California University of Health Sciences in Whittier, California.  These programs required 4-5 academic years of study (13 quarters at Palmer, 10 semesters at SCU), which is condensed into about 3.5 years with no summer holidays or extended breaks.  During this time, we completed over 4,600 hours of study, including 1 year of clinical internship.  These hours included study in many of the same classes as other health science professionals…Anatomy, Biomechanics, Physiology, Pathology, Diagnostics, Neurology, Orthopedics, Biochemistry, etc. (Palmer curriculum, SCU curriculum).  Needless to say, it’s a very comprehensive (and exhaustive) field of study.

We’ll add more to this topic in future posts, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the amount of education, hard work, dedication required to become a D.C.  Until next time!

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