Health Essentials - How Long was Chiropractic School?
Hey, everybody. Dr. Fedich here at Village Family Clinic. I have a couple of questions I asked this morning in the clinic, so I thought I'd shoot this quick video for everybody, explain these things a little bit better here. So the title of this video is going to be “How long?” So I got asked two questions about how long, and we're going to explain them all right here. So how long? So I got two questions, kind of the same idea, and how long, how much. So, we're going to talk about that. So I got asked by a patient who didn't know a lot about chiropractic. How long was chiropractic school? So tell you a little bit about that. So to become a chiropractor, you first need a bachelor's degree. So typically, you'll get a bachelor's of science degree. That's when we're undergrad classes like anatomy, physiology, organic chemistry, those types of classes. Some would be a four year degree.
For myself, I actually did accelerated science programs. I did my full bachelor's degree in only three years. I took a look at extra classes and finished a little quicker, but you're going to go get your bachelor's of science typically in four years. And then my secondary degree is a DC, which is doctor of chiropractic, and that is another four years as well. So a chiropractor’s education is going to be about a total of eight years, four years undergrad, and four years of graduate school. In chiropractic school, you can do a lot more in-depth anatomy. Three hours, we did a day in an anatomy lab, a couple hours a day in a neuroscience lab, dissecting brains and human bodies. Working on cats as well, but a lot of time, three, four hours a day with human cadavers. Neuroscience, all those types of classes. And then after a couple years, you get into the chiropractic again, working on patients. We have to learn how to take and read x-rays, MRIs, all that kind of stuff. The last, about a year of that's going to be in a clinic, so we're going to work in a different clinic. So I did my undergrad in Hartford University, Hartford, Connecticut, grad school at Newark College of Health Sciences. And your last year of that, you go into an outpatient clinic type area, and I was in Levittown, Wyoming for that. Once you do those eight years, you have to pass a series of four board exams. So we're board certified as well. There's four part board exams. They're typically a day or two long, six to eight hours of testing, and you have to take four board exams to pass. And then whatever state you move into or practice into, you're going to have to get a license in that state. And almost every state has another further exam you have to take for that state as well.
So currently, I'm licensed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. I have three active licenses as of today. So that's all for chiropractic schools. Those asking about it. Just had an intern here the other day asking me about this as well. Then how long do we come in for? How often, I should say, to come in for? Just had this conversation ten minutes ago. So I'd like to draw this, so you probably heard me talk about this again. Right here is the optimal health line. We're born, we're healthy when we're young. However, not everyone's even born healthy. So we just read a recent study. It said eight out of ten children during birth, their neck is yanked or pulled. Those are coming out, and they get neck trauma. So not even born perfectly healthy. So about eighty percent of sore neck injuries. So that's why it's important to get your kids checked as well. And down here is where pain happens. So typically, you know, right now, we feel pretty good. Bumps, bruises, sports, eventually, we get some aches and pains. Right? We do our chiropractic adjustments. We're usually able to get the people out of pain, but it's really important to keep them that way. Right? So we kind of redraw this, and people once they're feeling better, like I said, just had this conversation, they're feeling good. They're coming in for maintenance care. So we've got them out of pain. They're somewhere up in here. They're on maintenance care. So there's people asking me how often or or how long they come in for. So I got to draw this picture for them. We start back up here. So I'll say, you know, if you come in, you know, if you come in every week, let's say, we'll probably do this. Right? So as we get older, we're all getting a little bit worse. So it'll drift that line maybe nice and slow. Every two weeks, probably a little bit more like that. Right? If we do every month, it'll be a little bit more like that. So that's one of the easiest ways to get people to draw you. And no matter what we do, we're all getting a little bit older every year, but we want to minimize that and minimize as much as we can. If we're doing it once a week, that's going to be a pretty slow line.
Every two weeks can be a little quicker, but still, that usually keeps things pretty good. If you're feeling well, every two weeks will keep you that way. Once a month, we're going to slow that down for sure, but we're definitely a little more likely to end up in the pain zone at some point. So just ask questions. How long schooling is and how long you come in for? How often do you come in? Just two questions I got this morning. Thought it'd be interesting to a lot of our patients out there. Hope everyone has a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon.
