Your checklist for the right career is demanding and specific: You want to help people lead healthier lives, using an approach that avoids invasive procedures and pharmaceutical solutions whenever possible. Oh, and you’d like this career to have an exciting, expanding future with a competitive salary. Earning your chiropractic degree could launch you toward your ideal career, but is it the right path for you?
Ready for a Chiropractic Degree? Here’s How to Find Out
1. You’ve Discovered That Chiropractic Degree is in Demand
Since 2012, four major medical journals have acknowledged the preference for conservative approaches to pain management, including spinal adjustments by chiropractors:
Patient reviews back the evidence-based research. According to a 2016 Gallup-Palmer survey, 95 percent of recent chiropractic users rated it as effective, and nearly 9 of 10 patients said they would recommend chiropractic to family, friends, and neighbors.
2. You’re Prepared…and Proven
If you’re in high school, you’ve shown success in math and science. Your interest in determining how to be a doctor led you to classes in physics, chemistry, and higher levels of math, including calculus and statistics. You even found time to accumulate some Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. Typically, incoming chiropractic degree students have a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
If you’re starting college or already there, know that most chiropractic schools require at least 90 semester hours of undergraduate college credits, which translates into about three years of work toward a bachelor’s degree.
Of those credit hours, admissions standards generally include 24 or more credit hours in life or physical sciences: biology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, genetics. Again, there’s an expectation of a 3.0 GPA or higher.
3. You’re Willing to Achieve Something Special
Thinking about how to be a doctor is a plan, not just an idea. Chiropractic school takes 3.3 years using a year-round, tri-semester schedule.
Chiropractors hold a Doctor of Chiropractic degree (D.C.) from an institution that’s accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the same organization that issues accreditation for schools of medicine. The number of “clock hours” is also equivalent – more than 4,200. Significantly, chiropractic school includes more hours than med school in anatomy, physiology, and the basic sciences.
4. You’re Ready to be a Leader in Healthcare Delivery
Chiropractors are at the forefront of the move toward integrative care – a patient-centered approach that focuses on addressing the whole person by collaborating with other healthcare professional to deliver optimal patient care.
According to the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), having a chiropractic degree is contributing steadily to making health care more efficient and less expensive.
5. You’re Interested in a Satisfying Career
In addition to helping patients with a drug-free approach to health, more than half of all chiropractors choose to be their boss and set their hours. (Others work in group practices, hospitals, wellness institutions, or for in-house company clinics.)
A U.S. News survey puts doctors of chiropractic are in its list of professions with the best job security. According to Salary.com, chiropractors have a median yearly compensation of $145,877.
How to be a Doctor of Chiropractic: CUKC is Right for You
Earn your doctor of chiropractic degree in as little as 3.3 years at Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC), a nonprofit, private, healthcare-focused university. The University’s spacious, 34-acre campus is in the award-winning city of Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of the Kansas City metro.
Our history in chiropractic education began in 1922. Today, CUKC is the only chiropractic university still guided by the founding family. More than one of every 10 chiropractors in the U.S. has earned a chiropractic degree from our College of Chiropractic.
Points of distinction for Cleveland University-Kansas City:
The answer to “how to be a doctor?” can be found here at Cleveland University-Kansas City. Start the process by requesting information or by downloading this free ebook, Your Complete Guide to the Chiropractic Profession today!
