March 2007

What price is your dignity worth?

by Dr. Kevin Pallis and Dr. Ed Plentz

All across the country DCs are faced with a fascinating question of ethics and morality, one that divides our great profession like no other. This is an age‑old question that deals with your values, your principles and your dignity. Are you proud of chiropractic? Will you defend chiropractic with every fiber of your being? Or is it only the economics that you defend? What a bold and insightful question to ask. Philosophers throughout the ages have sounded the warning ‑‑ to many a deaf ear and blind eye ‑‑ about the perils of living a life without purpose, without dignity, without congruency.

Doctor, what price is your dignity worth?

Living a life of congruency means doing what will take you where you want to be... your highest purpose, operating with integrity. What this doesn't mean is compromising on principle. When you violate a principle, you create a short‑term solution only to introduce a long‑term problem with more confusion and complexity in your life. What will be the price the next time someone asks you to compromise your integrity ‑‑ best offer?

Chiropractors have a belief or value that healthier people create a healthier planet. Our principle or how we apply our values is birth‑to‑death chiropractic care on a generational basis. This flies against conventional wisdom (the herd mentality) that says we are already healthy. Most people actually believe that taking chemicals creates health. They don't acknowledge or believe in the body's inherent capabilities or intelligence. All help for the body must come from the mind of science. If chemicals aren't enough, there's a whole classification of thought known as amputation, radiation and chemotherapy that will render you healthy.

Now for the moment of truth. Will you become a teacher of a new concept known as health, or will you give people what they desire, based on their past medical programming? The herd then comes to your office saying that although we're already healthy, we do have a few musculoskeletal issues that could use a little work. Then the herd asks you to back off the healthier planet stuff and work on a crick or ache. If you hold onto your belief or your values you're labeled unreasonable, a heretic, unrealistic, or some other nonsense. Again, what price is your dignity worth?

At what point of ridiculousness will we, as a profession, wake up to the fact that we're losing our principle, purpose and identity? The chiropractic adjustment is losing ground to the more trendy ways of relieving people's back pain solely. Decompression therapy, physical therapy, laser, solar glare, massage therapy, all have their place in musculoskeletal therapeutics. The fact they have nothing to do with chiropractic is a sadly unpopular concept in most practices today. As a humanitarian, you must ask yourself what a decompression table has to do with children? As a humanitarian you realize that all the musculoskeletal relief in the world will not change the paradigm of health. When a salesperson asks you to give up chiropractic in the name of violating your own principles... what will you do?

When we created our "Love Has No Color" world project, we wanted to show the world what a group of like‑minded DCs could do with a group of like‑minded Native Americans. We demonstrated our principles to the reservation, our profession and the world that one person can and will make a difference.

Brandi Charrette started Life University in January and began her chiropractic training. Upon graduation, she'll return to the reservation and will have a practice/cultural center built for her. We fully expect her to be wildly successful being a chiropractor, despite the 65% unemployment rate, alcoholism and crime. We fully expect poor health to be replaced by health on the reservation. We fully expect crime and unemployment to decrease and spirit and hope to soar.

When we give up our ideals and principles for income‑producing activities that don't support those principles, the very foundation of chiropractic is eroded. All of us are affected when any of our new practice members walk in the office and encounter non‑chiropractic activities that now define chiropractic as musculoskeletal and adults only. Having a purpose of seeing entire families healthier takes courage. It takes courage to stand alone in a sea of purposeless DCs bobbing like ships without a rudder or a compass.

Principled DCs have a moral compass that allows them to stay on track while being successful by any measure. Reclaim your dignity and your purpose, both professionally and personally and live a life worth living.

(The New Renaissance is a movement of passionate chiropractors dedicated to changing the world. The leader in patient education since 1977, the Mentor IV Coaching Program is a step‑by‑step navigational guide that embodies the very essence of The New Renaissance vision of healthier people creating a healthier world. Without patient education, your patients won't "get it." To learn more about The New Renaissance, contact world headquarters at 800‑525‑3879.)