Complementary And Alternative Medicine Assignment Essay

Practicing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) can be a great challenge. However, it is important to note that the number of professionals working and practicing in this field is continuously increasing. The objective of this paper is to outline the interview session that has been conducted featuring a chiropractor.
The CAM practitioner was informed prior to the interview that this will be an interview that is meant to be presented as a course assignment. Under the condition that his face and identity would not be revealed by the interviewers, the CAM practitioner, specifically chiropractic, decided to voluntarily participate in the program. For uniformity purposes, the chiropractor would be addressed as Mr. A in this paper. There are a total of ten questions asked and all of them got answered.

What is the training and preparation of the individual?

That was also the time when they were able to apply everything that they have learned in the past four years, including the ones in the field of basic sciences and professional education. In order to prepare himself better, he also participated in volunteer chiropractic job positions. This way, he was able to gain the necessary experience to get accepted to regular chiropractic positions in the medical institution he is currently affiliated with.

How long have they been in practice?

What scope of services do they provide?
The interviewee in this case is a chiropractor. Naturally, he works in the chiropractic industry. Chiropractors specialize in treating musculoskeletal conditions involving the bones, the muscles, soft tissues. The area or region of the body in which they specialize is the spine. Some examples of conditions that chiropractors often treat include but may not be limited to cervical strains, back pains, spinal disc herniation, and etc.
The main method of treatment that chiropractors use is manipulation or manipulative therapy. It is important to note that chiropractice is a form of alternative medicine but literatures suggest that it may soon become a mainstream form of medicine because of its characteristics and the fact that the industry has managed to show promising results when it comes to improving patient outcomes (i.e. reducing pain, preventing secondary complications, etc.) .

What is the size, gender, and age range of their clientele?

Chiropractors do not have a specific target market. Or to be more specific, chiropractors’ clientele cannot be divided or selected based on their size, gender, or even age range. This is because chiropractors can and are actually expected to treat a person regardless of his or her size, gender, or age as long as he has a referral from a doctor, or as simple as the fact that he has a complaint that he thinks can be solved by chiropractice. According to Mr. A, they do, however, notice certain trends when it comes to their clients.
This may, however, not be classified as a generalization because the trend in clients that exist in the clinic that he was working on may not be the same in other chiropractic clinics. Most of their patients are guys in their mid to late twenties. In terms of size, most of their patients are either overweight or obese. They do encounter patients whose size is proportion to their body built, height, and other factors. However, these are the usual clients that they see going in and out of the chiropractic clinic. It has to be cleared, however, that the clinic accepts any patient who is suffering from a condition that can be treated by chiropractice.

Do they specialize in any type of clientele?

As mentioned earlier, the clients that Mr. A and his colleagues in the clinic handle are vastly heterogeneous in terms of size, gender, and age range. They do not cater to a specific group of clients based on their age group, gender, size, or even race, for that matter. If anything, there are certain conditions that they specialize on.
Musculoskeletal conditions are one of the most common, if not the most common, complaint of their clients. More specifically, conditions such as low back pain, cervical strain, and muscle imbalances appear to be a common condition among a large percentage of the clinic where Mr. A works’ patients. So, to answer the interview question, no, they do not specialize in any type of clientele.

What is the primary health issue that brings clients to this provider?

Musculoskeletal pains are some of the most common complaints that Mr. A hears he patients encounter. Low back pains and strains in the different regions of the spine are also some of the other most common. Anyway, they both fall on the musculoskeletal pain category because they all lead to pain. Needless to say, the level or intensity of pain that their clients feel is one of the most important indicators that Mr. A use in determining whether the treatment that he administered to the patients were effective or not.

What health issue does the practitioner think their treatment is most effective in addressing?

The same answer to the previous question applies here: musculoskeletal pain. As mentioned earlier, manipulation is the main form of treatment that chiropractors use in their practice. The purpose of manipulation is to correct any misaligned structure—which is presumed to be the main factor causing the pain in the first place. Once these misalignments get fixed, the chiropractors expect the pain to disappear.

What is the range of fees for services?

Since Mr. A. practices chiropractice in the U.S., he is paid an hourly rate. According to him, this figure is fixed. Currently, he gets paid $15 per hour. This means that on an 8 hour work shift per day he gets paid some $120.

Are their services normally covered by medical insurance?

There are chiropractic centers, specifically those that are affiliated with large medical centers, hospitals, and institutions, whose services are covered by medical insurance. However, small chiropractic centers and clinics often do not get this privilege. This is surprising, according to Mr. A because normally only procedures that are elective are the ones that are considered to be not covered by medical insurance. Chiropractic services are not elective because there are underlying conditions that compel patients to visit chiropractic clinics and centers and get treated by actual and licensed chiropractors. In Mr. A’s case, his services are only paid in cash because he only works in a medium-sized clinic that unfortunately, most large medical insurance companies do not yet recognize.
What would they most like people to know about the CAM they practice? What type of marketing or publicity do they conduct?
If there is one thing that Mr. A and other chiropractors would want people to know about chiropractic services, that would be the fact that they can prove to be effective in treating the conditions that they are meant to treat. In fact, Mr. A. trusts in the power of chiropractic techniques so much that he believes the effects of chiropractic-based treatments can be considered as effective, if not more effective than mainstream forms of rehabilitation such as physical therapy and occupational therapy.
Nonetheless, this is an issue that only literatures that are based on clinical trials can solve. Unfortunately, even the literatures about the topic still present mixed findings about the effectiveness of chiropractice versus that of other mainstream forms of medicine .
Marketing and publicity strategies must be patterned on the same ones that mainstream forms of medicine use. After all, chiropractors want to be considered a part of a mainstream form of medicine—chiropractice, and so if they want that to happen, then people in their respective CAM field must behave the same way people from mainstream fields of medicine are behaving.

Perceptions

All in all, I was impressed with the way how Mr. A answered all of the questions. The ten items listed in this interview report only summarizes the interview conversation I had with Mr. A. but in reality, I have talked to him about his practice and chiropractice for nearly 30 minutes, non-stop. That is a lot of time and within that time; I managed to ask a lot of questions about him and his career in one of the fields of CAM. He came out as a very patient man.
He knew that I needed to interview him in order to finish this report but he did not take advantage of that. Throughout the interview, he was enthusiastic and confident in answering all of the questions. He even corrected me when he though my perception about their profession was getting wrong.
As someone who got to know more about chiropractice, I can say and feel at the same time that he knows what he is doing and in the case of the interview, saying. If asked with the question whether I would consider this CAM treatment someday, I would go with yes. This is because not only that the literatures suggest that chiropractice is an effective form of CAM for treating musculoskeletal pain especially in areas around the spine, but also that the people administering the management are great and highly trained.

References

Meeker, W., & Haldeman, S. (2002). Chiropractic: A Profession at the Crossroads of Mainstream and Alternative Medicine. Annals of Internal Medicine.
Reggars, J. (2011). Chiropractic at the crossroads or are we just going around in circles. Chiropr Man Therap.