I have recently been accepted to one of the main foreign med schools. Attending med school would entail my selling my chiropractic practice and starting from the ground up. I have been in practice in NY but the rise of third-party administrators has financially devastated our practices here. Question to any DCs who currently are in school or have completed a foreign program:

1. Any regrets, if so why?
2. How difficult was it to secure a residency of choice?
3. Do you feel it is possible to amalgamate chiropractics with medical practice?
4. Did you have to sacrifce/inactivate current DC licensure?
5. Was it worth the time, money, expenditures of effort and what would you have done differently?

I would appreciate a response to any of the above. I have been in practice for 13 years (on my own for over 6 years) and am not pleased with the turn of events within the profession. Ironically, I have practiced AK/nutrition in conjunction with a variety of chiropractic techniques and am fairly deeply rooted in the philosophy of chiropractic - I also have witnessed the merits of medicine in critical care situations. This year I also sat and passed part IV so my choice is basically between attending a foreign med school or beginning chiropractic practice in a more hospitable state. Please let me know.

DR MIKE

best of luck. too many emails to answer.

If you want to study medicine because it is now or has been in your heart I say by all means GO FOR IT and don't stop til your done.

If its because of financial gloom in your profession I say you should think twice. If its mainly because of the first reason and intensified by financial gloom then GO FOR IT.

Even the MD/DO community is feeling the hit from 3rd party managers that take an unknown % from the fees they themselves do not generate. Ofteb they won't even tell you how much they take.


I have known MANY 2nd career people that studied medicine.

Feel free to message me.

I am a DC and PT. I am attending AUC in May 2005. I think you should go to Med school if your having doubts about Chiro. You can email me at toddd@ahcrehab.com if you want to know more info or hear about about my situation here in Nevada as a Chiro.

This is a repost:

If any DC's in the house, please let me know!!
I'm contemplating whether I should dropout of my chiro school and head out to SGU.

Any SCUHS/LACC grad??

My question is:

Is basic science @ SGU, AUC, ROSS, etc pretty comparable to the basic science from the chiro schools. I know education at some chiro schools are dumb down, but SCUHS has very solid science courses...so I would like to hear from people who grad from SCU....thanks a bunch!

If you are not a chiropractor but know of someone, how are they doing in class? I would like to hear a feed back!! Thanks

I think a move from Chiro to medicine is great, only if you really want to. It is impossible to make it as an honest, simple biomechanical NMS chiro anymore, it's kinda sickening.

do it for the right reason..

hating the third payer system as a main reason to change isn't gonna help... medicine has deep rooted issues that have been building up since the 80's advent of HMO's and recent fights in congress almost decreasing reimbursements by 2-16% isn't helping. things are getting worse

basically if you think making a great living in medicine will be that much easier or better than chiro read up on the wonderful new pay scheme that is P4P (pay for performance). this is gonna probably cause the sickest and whinniest patients to loose medical care...not for lack of "insurance" aka medicaid, but because they make any practice look bad on paper...not even gonna mention the non compliants that will wonder from practice to practice hoping someone will take them and their dragging P4P scores... and we won't even mention the scumb sucking lawyers advertising on TV during the day and at 3am making MD's out to be peoples ticket to a hummer and easy living.....

point is, do medicine if it is what you really wanna do..the grass is far from greener in terms of finances here but you are right on one side..at least the job outlook is great for now---look 10 years down the road as NP and PA's continue to get more rights and privilidges though...

a few years ago giving them more freedom and rx privilidges was the savior of rural america, much like DO's were supposed to be?...we the grand MD's would sit in the big cities taking care of things only 'real' doctors can while they can alleviate the shortages in rural america.....

guess what? they aren't fullfilling their supposed role. they are taking the jobs of partners in medical offices, scrubbing in on surgeries, specializing in all areas and even opening their own offices hiring MD's..now they staff the drive thorugh clinics at your big city walmart, cvs, walgreens while the old country docs continue to wait for their replacements...

i can continue to ramble but the point is that you really gotta love medicine because for all the time it takes, all the money, sweat, missed chunks of your life, you'd be absolutely insane to do it for any other reason....

__________________
OBGYN PGY II
I see light at the end of the tunnel!!!...wait a minute its just another freakin tunnel!

That's a no-brainer.

Go to SGU or some other good school.

Just be prepared... medicine involves a lot more physiology and so on. MDs need a higher level of detail. Having taken physio, biochem, etc... in chiropractic school really won't give you any advantage.

Why are the DC's changing into medicine? Is it really that difficult as DC I know there are lots of negative posts but I have been taking it was a grain of salt. How if you are trained in a more medical model of a college do really bright people start promoting straight chiropractic. These are the ones who seem busy the ones who have difficulty with this method are not are as busy. Any truth?