Need a reason to embrace chiropractic as a career path? Life West can give you 10!
The motivation to become a chiropractor varies from person to person. If you’re wondering what your reason “why” is, let us give you a few things to consider.
#1: Chiropractors change lives
With the chiropractic adjustment, chiropractors allow the bodies of their patients to operate at their optimum potential. In some cases, this can produce miracles. In fact, the very first chiropractic adjustment in 1895 resulted in the patient regaining his hearing!
Life West helps students make a global impact through service trips, like this one in Tonga.
“Chiropractic is unique because it’s based on the understanding that there is a universal intelligence that guides and gives order to everything in the universe,” said Life West Director of Alumni Relations Palmer Peet, DC. “There’s an expression of that universal intelligence inside all of us, called innate intelligence. The focus of chiropractic is to restore the expression of innate intelligence, which expresses itself through the nervous system.”
By correcting misalignments in the spine called vertebral subluxations, which cause interference to the nervous system, chiropractors can pave the way for miracles to happen. Using various chiropractic techniques, refined in environments such as Life Chiropractic College West, which offers clinically inspired learning, chiropractors are given tools that can affect the lives of their patients, sometimes profoundly. Pursuing this career path gives you the chance to enable new miracles.
#2: Chiropractors are in demand
According to a study conducted by consulting firm Grand View Research, the chiropractic market size is expected to approach $18 billion by the year 2025. Additionally, 35 million people receive chiropractic care each year, and there are many areas around the world where chiropractic care could help millions more.
There’s a lot of room out there for chiropractors to grow their practice. The numbers show that this is a career path full of growth and opportunity.
#3: Chiropractors meet new people on a daily basis
If you’re a social person who enjoys the company of others, being a chiropractor provides plenty of opportunities to do that. Once you establish where you’d like to practice, immerse yourself in local organizations and groups and spread the word about what you do. Being a part of your community will lead a steady stream of customers to your doors.
There are also plenty of chiropractic conferences across the country and around the world where you can meet new people, network with fellow professionals and develop your professional skill set. This includes The WAVE, an annual conference held by Life Chiropractic College West in Northern California’s Bay Area each summer.
#4: Chiropractors promote healthy lifestyles
Exercise is part of the chiropractic lifestyle.
By correcting vertebral subluxations through adjustments, a patient’s nervous system gets reset, and messages from the brain get to the rest of the body as quickly as possible.
“When you receive a chiropractic adjustment, it’s actually reconnecting you to the spirit within yourself,” Dr. Peet said. “The spirit can have a better expression and deeper release of universal intelligence inside your own body, and normal health and vitality are restored.”
The idea of removing interference from the body also extends to other areas of life. Chiropractors promote a lifestyle of overall wellness, which features a healthy diet, plenty of exercise and other principles designed to make sure the body is operating at its optimal potential.
#5: Chiropractic care presents another path to traditional health care
Rather than relying on external methods, chiropractors practice in such a way that the body heals itself from above-down and inside-out. Regular chiropractic adjustments that restore the body’s alignment and nervous system function allow for a more natural path of healing, and the adjustments themselves only take a few minutes!
“I don’t see us as an alternative, I see us as the way,” Dr. Peet said. “Chiropractic recognizes that the body is a self-healing organism, and we work to optimize that.”
#6: Chiropractors are their own bosses
Chiropractors who own their own practices can choose where and when to open their doors. Create a flexible schedule, and design the scale of work you’d like to do. If you want to build a business that allows you to practice four hours per day, or open for only three days a week, you can do that.
A steady stream of patients could put you in a position to construct your ideal work/life balance. To give students the biggest advantage possible, Life Chiropractic College West offers courses in business management, as well as regular job fairs, consultations with professionals and a job board that is updated daily with new opportunities within chiropractic.
#7: Chiropractic offers opportunities to embrace your passions
Chiropractic is an incredibly broad field, one that’s growing more and more inclusive by the day. If you’re passionate about one particular area of health care, you can tailor your practice in that direction.
The many fields for specialization include pre-natal care, pediatric care and sports care. You can even learn how to adjust animals and restore good health in cats, dogs and horses. You can do a lot with a doctorate of chiropractic degree.
#8: Chiropractors have extensive opportunities to pay it forward
Chances to provide mentorship abound in chiropractic, especially with new students and graduates entering the fast-growing field. Whatever your career path winds up being, chances are someone will be in your shoes as a student with similar goals sooner rather than later, which opens the door for mutually-positive relationships to grow.
“Every student should have a mentor or some sort of guidance,” Dr. Peet said. “When I graduated from chiropractic school, I had a mentor, and I lived in his office for a couple of weeks. I did everything my mentor did and expected the same results that he was seeing, and that’s what happened.”
Additionally, professionals often hire chiropractic associates, or CAs, to help around the office, and some CAs ultimately become chiropractors themselves. If you’ve ever wanted to be a guiding light to others, chiropractic provides plenty of chances to do that.
#9: Chiropractors get their degrees without accruing as much debt as other health care practitioners
Life West students are all smiles at graduation.
The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the average student loan debt of a medical student in 2018 totaled nearly $197,000. Dental school graduates often owe more than $287,000 when their schooling is complete, and pharmacists need to repay, on average, $163,000.
By comparison, a study carried out by four chiropractors in 2014 showed that nearly 72% of survey respondents graduated with $175,000 or less in student debt. Several programs, such as Life West’s Clinically Inspired Learning curriculum, allow students to graduate and begin practice more quickly than some of their peers, which may result in a savings of several tuition payments.
#10: Being a chiropractor is lucrative!
In addition to graduating with less debt than other practitioners, chiropractors often have opportunities to pay back their debts in shorter amounts of time. Through a combination of factors, chiropractors can help their bank accounts while also assisting their patients.
“In practice, we have low overhead,” Dr. Peet said. “Many chiropractors take care of high volumes of patients. Financially, it can be quite rewarding to be a doctor of chiropractic.”
If this sounds appealing to you, come to a Life Chiropractic College West Career Night or contact a Life West admissions representative!
