Ask the Chiropractor: Navigating the Educational Pathway to Chiropractic Care

In this episode of 'Ask The Chiropractor,' Dr. Brant Hulsebus, a chiropractor based in Rockford, Illinois, discusses the educational and licensure requirements for chiropractors, focusing on his own experience and the regulations in Illinois. He outlines the detailed academic journey, including the prerequisites, coursework, labs, clinical experience, and national board exams. Dr. Hulsebus also highlights the ongoing education requirements for maintaining a chiropractic license and challenges the stereotypes and misconceptions about chiropractic education. Listeners are encouraged to reach out with questions to be featured in future episodes.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Thanks for joining us today. I want to talk about something chiropractic education. I'm the team chiropractor of the Rockford Ice Hall. It's the Chicago Blackhawk Affiliates in the A HL, and we have a locker room where we have a really good medical coverage. We have myself a chiropractor, we have an ER doctor, we have a family physician, we have a surgeon, and we have an orthopedic surgeon along with the massage therapist, strength conditioning coach, two athletic trainers, and that's our oh and a dentist, and that's our team. So down in the locker room we get talking and a couple people were asking me a lot of questions about what does a chiropractor have to do to graduate chiropractic school and become licensed in the state of Illinois? Now I'm gonna discuss the state of Illinois because I'm the president of the Illinois Chiropractic State Association, the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association, and our National Association, the ICA, the International Chiropractic Association. I'm the Illinois delegate, so I know quite a bit about Illinois housing regulations, so chiropractic, college, chiropractic education, and national board and licensure. What's this all about? Today majority of chiropractors transfer into school with either 90 hours or they've completed their Bachelor's of Science. Now, 25 years ago, when I did this the common minor that your major you would take in undergrad was pre-med. So I was pre-med at University of Massachusetts Amherst, but today a lot of 'em have a new degree in kinesiology exercise, stretching and stuff like that, which I think is phenomenal. 25 years ago that wasn't, that was more of a class than a major. So things do change, but typically you transfer into chiropractic school either with 90 hours or your Bachelor's of science. Now, if you transfer with 90 hours, it's easy to graduate with your Bachelor's of Science degree from the chiropractic school. I graduated a bachelor's of science degree and adoption of chiropractic from the chiropractic school. I transferred in with 90 hours. However, some states require a Bachelor's of Science first. Some states require a Bachelor's of science from summer other than your chiropractic school. Why this other than your chiropractic school is weird to me. I think it's a little bit discriminatory, but it's not a problem here in Illinois. So I, I worry about the Illinois battles. So first we basically have 90 hours, or our bachelor's degree first. Then we start chiropractic school now at Palmer College of Chiropractic, where I went to school, which is where chiropractic was invented. I. Okay. We have 10 trimesters of chiropractic college. Each trimester is about 30 hours, so they're trying to squeeze five and a half years of schooling into three and a third years, 10 trimesters, three trimesters a year. Now each trimester is 30 hours. So when I was an undergraduate, 30 hours is a complete year, not a trimester. So the average chiropractic student's getting about 90 hours a year in chiropractic. Now, why is that so much? Because we're all there to take one thing and one thing only. There isn't like you diversify the different techniques and things like that until you're much later along in classes. Now, your first year of chiropractic school is basically just the raw sciences. Why is that? Because that's our first national board. It's just raw sciences. So I say raw scientists. We're doing cadaver labs, we're doing that Dissect labs. We're learning a lot about the nervous system, a lot about the nervous system, gross anatomy and physiology and other things, but a lot about the nervous system. We have a central nervous class. We have a peripheral nervous class. Then we also have on top of it gross anatomy. One gross anatomy, two gross anatomy. One would be all the limbs and extremities. Gross anatomy. Two would be the core of the body. And again, we also have spinal anatomy on top of that. So that's our third one. So we have 3D three labs, science classes plus CNS class plus PNS class and CNS class has a lab also. So we actually spend more time in the classroom as some of these topics than your typical family doctor does. So chiropractors get plenty of hours. And our national boards, I thought it was funny 'cause we have a medical school here in my town and one of my staff people, her husband was enrolled there and he went to go to study his national board this first part and I let him look at my national board review book and he thought that was gold. He couldn't believe how much stuff crossed over. So our first year of medical school and our first year of chiropractic school are very similar. The human body is the human body. Now, the second year of chiropractic school, now you're gonna start learning how to do physical diagnosis. You're gonna start looking at different pathologies. You're gonna start studying how to do a physical exam, and a little bit of learning how to use your fingertips to feel people's back in a class called palpation. Now, when you finish the second year, this national board's part two, this is gonna be on stuff like we just talked about. But a big part of our education is also x-rays.'cause we are our own radiologist, so there's also a lot of X-ray questions and stuff like that as well. Now, part three was invented to eliminate all state boards, so it's very close to part two state boards. So you usually take your part two and part three closely together. When I was a student, we took 'em the same weekend. Now they separate. Now they have to separate 'em. So part three was invented to eliminate all state boards. However, there were still state boards. So they came up with a part four national board. And that's job also is to eliminate all state boards. I know I just repeated myself, I can't tell you why governments do what they do. I can just tell you what you have to do. So part four is a more hands-on practical exam where you go into the room, you have patients as actors and you have to. Diagnose what's going on with them. You have to show how you would do a chiropractic adjustment. You have to do mock x-rays and x-ray reports and demonstrate that you are capable of seeing patients and that one is not your final year obviously.'cause your final year of chiropractic school, now you're really getting into adjusting and seeing patients. Now, this is where chiropractic schools are vastly different. At Palmer College and I went to school, we had Togo Recoil, which is an upper cervical class. We had cervical class, we had thoracic lumbar class, we had pelvic class, we had extremity class. And lastly, we had technique review where we do 'em all over again. And also, as I mentioned earlier, pal, patient. So we had seven or eight technique classes as we went through school. Now some chiropractic schools have one. That's all they have. So when it comes to seeing a chiropractor with good adjusting skills. There's certain colleges where that's really stressed. There's other certain colleges where they just breeze through it. I don't understand that personally because that's what a chiropractor does is chiropractic adjustments. And I think just to breeze through that, I don't understand it. I don't endorse it and I don't really personally, if I'm looking for a chiropractor out of town for myself, I know which colleges and I see they graduated from, I just skip right over. And which colleges I tend to. Go towards. Obviously, my own school is definitely one of them. After that, we've completed all four national boards. We've completed our education. Now, the last thing you have to do is you have to perform 300 chiropractic visits before you can graduate. This includes exams and x-ray requirements On top of it, once you've completed your 300 chiropractic visits, you've completed your x-rays, you completed your examinations. Then you've completed all four national boards and you've graduated Palm Chiropractic College, and then you're able to apply for a state licenser. Now different states have different requirements on how high you have to score national boards. But today, currently all states require all par four national boards. There are other national boards like physical therapy. Some states require that. Some states do not. Illinois does not. So I'm not real rehearsed on that one'cause it was not required for me. Some students take it just to take it now and get outta the way in case they ever want to move. In order to maintain our license. Here in Illinois, we are required to do 60 classroom hours every three years. So 20 classroom hours a year, and then 90 hours are reading. Every three years or 30 hours are research review every year. Those are our requirements in order to maintain our license. So once you finish and graduate school, it's never over. You continue to educate and learn yourself more in school. So a lot of people give false information about chiropractic schools, especially in pulp culture. You'll see that, they reference that we're a quick, mini mall school. I would invite you if you're ever in Davenport, Iowa, to drive by Palmer College if you're ever down in. Fort Ow there. Check out Palmer, Florida. You will see this is not a it's college, a mini mall, not by any means. Chiropractic school is a real big physical thing. It's a real institution. I, like I said, if you're ever in Davenport, Iowa, or Florida, make sure you look at the Palmer Campus. It's very proud to show those off. You'll see that it's a real school. It's a real thing. We are not like that. And I've also, even here in my community, I've gone to the academy programs for high school students where they talk about different career paths and they have a thing up that says chiropractic is a two year degree straight from high school. And that is true. I. But that was at my grandpa's time, not my dad's time or my time. So that's no longer been true for a long time. And obviously my grandpa didn't have to go to school very long in the forties because nobody knew what MRIs were, DNA and stuff like that. So there was a lot less to learn back then. But nevertheless, he still got all the same adjusting hours I got. Now. A lot of people will know in my office, if you've ever been to my office, we have interns. What's an intern? One intern would be somebody who finished their 300 chiropractic visits. Prior to their 10th trimester, their last semester. If that's the case, they are allowed to go to an approved clinic and finish their last semester in real life. Hands-on chiropractic experience here at this office. We've had several of them. A lot of Dr. Sam, she did that before she graduated and joined us. A lot of you knew Dr. Da. He did that too. Dr. Steer did that as well. We've had others that didn't stick with us too, that did it. Dr. Sarah, she came and did her internship with us. Sarah Brighton did, went on her own way and also Stephanie the first one to do it. So we've hosted many students here, so they continue to learn to get education in real life clinical setting once they've completed chiropractic school. So we do spend more time in the classroom than the medical doctor does in order to get our license. But a medical doctor has to do rotations and rounds, which we don't really have to do. That's built into our education at the school. Palmer College, which again, I got to speak at the school I know has a very large clinic and I brought patients to Palmer College in order to be seen there by some of the top experts in the world on chiropractic. I often. Hope that Palmer College will become like the Cleveland Clinic of Medicine. It'll become the, like the Cleveland Clinic or the Mayo Clinic of Chiropractic Care. Again, we've had awesome techniques, awesome teachers there. I've seen things on X-rays in my office. I'm like, Ooh, I don't remember learning about that. And I've taken those X-rays with me with students in order to look at them there at the school. So what does a chiropractic education look like? I hope I answer that question in order to become lessons and everything like that. So as pop cultural expertise of chiropractors and what we do and what we don't do. Along with this actually breaking down, explained it to you. It was a very long road. It was a very long process. It's a very challenging process. It is not simply just show up and you get your license, not by any means. I have several classmates of mine that did not finish the education 'cause they fund it was too challenging. So chiropractic is a real degree. Chiropractics religious education. My grandfather was the one that got student loans passed in order to get our schools federally accredited to show they were real colleges. And we follow all the guidelines and rules of every other college and every other kind of health student institution, and all the headaches that go with that too. If you'd like to learn more, I recommend that you check out palmer college.edu palmer.edu. Check out the college itself. Take a look at it. Look for yourself. Do your own homework, do your own research. But like the doctors at the Ice saw game. If you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, or what chiropractors do or don't do, or how they became chiropractors, always feel free to leave a message or a comment at the end of this, wherever you're listening or watching this, and I'll be the one to try to answer you. Maybe next time you'll be the podcast of the week. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Look forward to hearing and learning more from you, and I look forward to you educating you. Thank you.