You have a calling to help people live healthier lives, right? So clearly, you’re thinking healthcare career. Did you know patient-care-related professions now make up 18% of the U.S. economy? Do you know that earning a chiropractic degree – becoming a doctor of chiropractic – is a terrific way to make your true calling a reality?
If you’ve begun to study healthcare roles, you know that better medical care increasingly depends on specialists using coordinated, collaborative care. In fact, specialists with deep-down knowledge of certain areas are the key to delivering better care and driving down costs through more accurate diagnoses.
Expanded knowledge of the human body and its processes and systems has elevated the need for healthcare specialization. Today, you’ll find specialists in areas such as pediatric anesthesiology, interventional cardiology, and neuroradiology, to name just a few.
By definition, a doctor of chiropractic focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of spine disorders and other parts of the musculoskeletal system. Chiropractic, meaning done by hand, emphasizes non-pharmaceutical approaches to address and correct biomechanical dysfunctions in the human body.
Care from a doctor of chiropractic is a whole body, comprehensive approach, covering manual assessment and correction, nutrition, constructive exercise, and lifestyle and posture modifications.
Chiropractic is practiced by more than 70,000 chiropractors throughout the world. It’s the third-largest third largest doctoral-level healthcare profession behind medicine and dentistry.
Chiropractic is increasingly recommended as a first course of action for many musculoskeletal conditions. There is plenty of evidence to show that earning a doctor of chiropractic degree is a contributing factor in providing safe, cost-effective healthcare.
Today, services by doctors of chiropractic are essential components of the healthcare system:
Chiropractic education includes more than 4,200 clock hours of classroom, laboratory, and guided clinical experiences, similar in many ways to medical school education. Most students earn their doctor of chiropractic degree in less than 3.5 years through a year-round trimester schedule.
The scope of a chiropractic college’s education includes:
Most chiropractic colleges require at least 90 semester hours of undergraduate college credits; most students have already earned a bachelor’s degree in human biology, biology, kinesiology, or exercise science.
Minimum requirements for a chiropractic degree include 24 or more credit hours in life or physical sciences, with at least 12 of these science credit hours in a course with a significant lab component. Applicants are expected to have had coursework in biology, chemistry (general and organic, with labs), anatomy, and physiology. In general, applicants should have a cumulative 3.00 or higher GPA.
Knowing what you now know, you can easily see that the doctor of chiropractic profession has much to offer and presents many benefits – to patients, of course, but also for you.
Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC) is a private, nonprofit university specializing in chiropractic and the health sciences. The CUKC campus is in Overland Park, Kansas, a Kansas City area suburb of 190,000 people. Overland Park is recognized for its family-friendliness and livability.
Our chiropractic history started in 1922. Today, 100 years later, more than one out of every 10 chiropractors in the United States has earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from our College of Chiropractic.
In addition to a Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree you can complete in 3.3 years, some students choose our B.S. in Human Biology/Chiropractic degree (D.C.) program that can reduce the total amount of time in school by up to a year.
Ready to take the next step toward your true calling? Get connected with a CUKC admissions advisor to get this free eBook: Your Complete Guide to the Chiropractic Profession.