In Australia, chiropractors share a common tertiary education pathway with osteopaths and physiotherapists and chiropractic education involves undergraduate and/or masters-level university training over five years.

All accredited chiropractic programs in Australia include units in basic and clinical sciences. Also included are units in physical therapy, physical rehabilitation, radiology, nutrition, paediatrics, geriatrics, public health and evidence-based practice.

As with other primary healthcare professions, chiropractic pre-professional training requires a significant proportion of the curricula to be clinical subjects related to evaluating and caring for patients. As part of professional training, final-year students must also complete a minimum of a one-year supervised clinical internship.

All registered chiropractors must complete mandatory continuing education each year in order to maintain registration and practice as a non-pharmacological, non-surgical spine care and musculoskeletal-allied healthcare professional.

For a Chiropractic treatment, your doctor will take a verbal and written history from the patient, as well as perform x-rays if necessary and undertake a physical examination of the spine and or extremities. In some cases, further examination is required such as neurological or orthopaedic tests.

Treatment will then take place on the initial visit. Treatment will consist of a specifically tailored management process designed for the patient based on the collation of findings in the examination process. This will consist of specific spinal adjustments to the identified regions along with providing advice to the patient in order to speed up the recovery process. Procedures will be explained prior to treatment commencing to ensure that you have a thorough understanding of what we are aiming to achieve.

Everyone is different and therefore there is no set healing time that we can guarantee or predict. What we can guarantee is that we endeavour to achieve positive results as quickly as possible. Healing is up to your body to determine how quickly you will recover. Your body needs time to heal and adapt to the changes that we are making and that can vary in time due a variety of factors.

Your healing time will not always be a straight consistent upward trajectory. Healing can sometimes progress quickly and then stagnate or regress for a period before full health is achieved.  Healing time can also be dependant on patient compliance therefore it is important to always follow the advice of your practitioner.

It is not uncommon to feel some discomfort after your initial treatment, especially if treatment has been performed on an inflamed joint or disc. Should the patient present in a manner that would be likely to experience some post-treatment discomfort, your practitioner will provide advice outlining how to best manage this period. This discomfort is usually just felt on the first treatment and will settle after 24-48 hours and is similar to the soreness that one exhibits when they exercise for the first time after an extended break.

In general, it is not painful to be adjusted and patients will simply experience a feeling of pressure placed upon their spine as the spinal adjustment is delivered. Patients will present to the clinic with different levels of pain and this is usually the indicator as to how sensitive the adjustment is. Should the joint be inflamed, or if there is significant muscle spasm, this will result in some discomfort for that initial adjustment. It is the chiropractor’s role to deliver this treatment with minimal force and all treatments will be discussed with the patient before they are performed.

Once patients progress out of the acute stage of their presentation, many patients comment that they notice immediate improvement of their discomfort once they have been adjusted.

Patients predominantly seek care from a Chiropractor to obtain pain relief from their condition. Once this objective has been achieved, patients will then make one of two choices. Firstly, they may be content that their problem has been addressed and treated and are happy to monitor their pain and should symptoms return, they will seek further treatment at that time. Alternatively, patients may decide that they are feeling so great that they may want ongoing treatment to stay at this level, especially if they are in an environment where stressors are continually placed upon their body.

As your chiropractor, we will always advise our patients regarding the best form of care for them. This is always individualised to the patient’s needs and although advice will be provided, the patient will always have the final say regarding any treatment provided.

If you have sustained a strain or spasm of your low back, it is our advice to use an ice pack as the initial form of management prior to presenting to the chiropractor. Our general recommendation is to wrap the ice pack in a cold compress (ie. damp tea-towel) and then apply this to the site of injury for 20 minutes every 2 hours.

This practice will help reduce inflammation and muscle spasm of the injured region and will provide the chiropractor with a less irritated joint to perform a specific chiropractic adjustment in order to initiate the healing process.