At the start of her presentation at Life West’s recent Friday seminar, Devin Vrana, DC, distributed safety pins to the audience. She wasted no time in challenging students and attendees to fulfill their potential.
“This is the difference between a sick and suffering society,” she said while adjusting the pin from an open to a closed position, “and a connected, alive, vibrant humanity. Which one will you be part of?”
Dr. Devin Vrana tells students to hold up their hands.
A resident of Wichita, Kansas, Dr. Vrana earned her chiropractic degree in 2010 and has owned and operated several practices. She was recognized as the Kansas Chiropractic Association (KCA) Young Doctor of the Year in 2016, and she also earned a spot on the Wichita Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list in 2015.
Dr. Vrana’s 40-minute seminar focused on motivating students to use their hands, hearts and voices to spread chiropractic around the world. She urged those in attendance to dream big while invoking the accomplishments of some of the field’s most notable practitioners.
“I ask myself daily, ‘What would B.J. Palmer do with the access I have today?’ ” she said, recounting how he traveled the world by boat and wrote hundreds of pages on a typewriter of his time. “What would B.J. have done with Facebook?”
Dr. Vrana urged students to use social media to spread the word about chiropractic and the values held by those in the profession.
“Use it for good,” she said. “Once a week, tell the story with Facebook or Instagram. Put a post up. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s not your job to consume information. It’s your job to put it out, and that doesn’t start when you’re trying to build a practice so you can get patients.”
A mother of five, Dr. Vrana counted ICPA CEO Jeanne Ohm, DC, as one of her mentors. Dr. Ohm died last month, and among her many duties in the world of chiropractic was a role on the Life West Board of Regents. The speaker said she could hear her mentor’s voice as she walked through the halls.
“I could hear her voice in her picture that hangs in your hallway, looking in my soul the same way she did when I took her course years ago,” Dr. Vrana said. “She changed my life. She played a birth video, and she said, ‘You feel that, don’t you? Don’t you forget it, and don’t you allow it to go on. You get out in the world and you tell them what we do.’ ”
In addition to her stop on campus, Dr. Vrana will also speak at Making HERstory, a conference organized by Life West students Ashley Gonzales and Nikki Kielkowicz. The conference is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 19, at the California Ballroom in Oakland and highlights women making a difference in chiropractic. Register for the event online.
