Florida State University to open chiro school

[Flaherty]

My alma mater, Florida State University, needs only Governor Jeb Bush's signature on a bill to receive authorization to open a college of chiropractic. I hang my head in shame. On another message board, a fellow Seminole did some research on the academic requirements to become a "doctor" of chiro:


Just looked up one - Life University in Atlanta.

www.life.edu/newlife/admi...eqnew.html

Looks to me like it takes 3 years of community college courses. (90 semester hours) Note this sentence: (30 semester/45 quarter credit hours of upper division coursework are no longer required.) It is confusing. Elsewhere it implies that the 30 hours no longer required are part of the 90, so it really might only take 60 hours.

No math required.

I had to look to find it, but it appears that the program itself - after these 60/90 hours - is 14 quarters (probably equates to 9 or 10 semesters).

Looking at the title of some of the courses, I can see where the medical profession would be concerned: Geriatric diagnosis, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Gynecological and Protological diagnosis, Toxicology Screening, Parisitology and Mycology, Immunology and Disease Patterns, and several more like that.

It certainly appears they are trying to teach a lot more than spinal adjustment.

I am no expert. I have no definite opinion. I need more info. But, I can see where the medical community would see red flags.

[Goshawk]

Well, I would assume that the official reason for including those genuine medical courses in the training for a chiropractor would be so that he could recognize genuine medical problems when he saw them, and would thus refer those patients to an M.D., not necessarily so that he could learn how to treat them with chiropractic.

Chiropractic isn't necessarily a totally woowoo field, you know. Florida State has nothing to be particularly ashamed of--it's not like they're opening a school of dowsing or something. And reputable chiropractors do know when a patient is presenting with something that they can't help, and will refer him to an M.D.

[Quasi]

Originally posted by Goshawk
Well, I would assume that the official reason for including those genuine medical courses in the training for a chiropractor would be so that he could recognize genuine medical problems when he saw them, and would thus refer those patients to an M.D., not necessarily so that he could learn how to treat them with chiropractic.

Chiropractic isn't necessarily a totally woowoo field, you know. Florida State has nothing to be particularly ashamed of--it's not like they're opening a school of dowsing or something. And reputable chiropractors do know when a patient is presenting with something that they can't help, and will refer him to an M.D.

Although I agree here, Florida should be very cautious. Bad signs are if the Chiro school is isolated from the rest of academia, like the Osher Institute of Harvard Medical School (Osher is in downtown Boston, pretty far away from the actual Longwood campus.) They do that to keep their students and workers away from real researchers, making their ivory tower appear to be solidly built. Another bad sign is if the courses appear to have legit titles, but in the descriptions it includes applied kinesiology and subluxation theory, outside of a historical or critical perspective. Since this will be a public project, the info must be open, right? We will see.