Jim Odell - Manifesto Issues. Growth of Chiropractic

Chiropractic – A Growth Profession?

In the CHRE 2005 report the GCC highlighted that a key challenge is to increase the number of education providers, with a better geographical spread, in order to increase the number of chiropractors.

The GCC website still says: “Chiropractic is a fast-growing independent health care profession in the United Kingdom”

The Reality

If you examine some basic statistics you will see that in the last 5 years much of the growth in the profession has been as a result of Chiropractors trained outside the UK (about 300) and each year some 80 chiropractors vanish from the register (quote from GCC). In fact in 2004/5 143 left the register and in 2005/6 219 (10% of the profession) left the register. No new colleges have been established in England. We are in fact a profession in the doldrums.

Given the current situation, I am currently struggling to understand why anyone in their 20’s would want to train to be a Chiropractor when it is now quicker (and probably cheaper) to train to be a medical doctor, even with their current problems.

I don’t have an answer but I do know that if the profession continues as it is and if past performance is a measure of future, which it will be if the people with the ‘old’ mentality are elected, then you will see a relative decline in our numbers.

You, like me, are probably fed up with the limited and often negative press chiropractic receives in the UK. When I entered the profession I couldn’t believe the amount of infighting that goes on within a profession of around 2000 people.

As a profession we must start working together to overcome differences and take UK chiropractic into a more secure future.