What's Concerning Most Chiropractic New Grads

I attended the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College’s annual Practice Opportunities event last week in Toronto. While there, I had many engaging conversations with some very bright chiropractic students. The majority of these students were in third and fourth year of their programs and they were starting to shift their attention on what’s next after graduation.

I took the opportunity to ask those students what aspect of starting practice concerned them the most. Putting myself back in those shoes almost 14 years ago, I can remember how stressful and daunting it was thinking about launching my practice. I was excited to finally put all that I have learned into real-world implementation but there were so many unknowns to figure out before I could make that happen. What type of clinical environment did I want to work in? Did I want to start my own clinic or work under more experienced practitioners for a few years to gain more experience? If working at another clinic, how do I structure my business relationship with the clinic and for myself as an independent associate? I really didn’t have any professional resources to turn to that understood the ins and outs of the chiropractic profession from a business perspective. I was given advice from a mentor, from older colleagues already in practice, and from classmates thinking they had it all figured out, but most of it was just guesswork and personal opinion. What I lacked was formal business training and a sound understanding of critical early practice business processes as I launched my career.

Much of the feedback from the chiropractic students last week included uncertainty around marketing, financial management, business planning and contracts. However, the biggest concern from the vast majority of students was where to start when launching their chiropractic careers. That sounds like a bit of a generalized concern, but when you think about the multitude of practice options, locations, therapeutic offerings and patient segments, it makes sense that it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed on how to take those first few steps in starting a practice. Part of this also stems from the lack of business experience and training, as most chiropractic students have followed a stringent educational path in the health sciences. I was one of them - thinking about how to become the best practitioner to help my patients, but not looking at the reality of how to run a business at the same time.

Practicality’s Early Practice Essentials seminar on May 11th and 12th in Toronto is designed to address exactly this uncertainty. Now that you’re wrapping up your clinical education as a chiropractor, what steps do you need to take to go from student to a doctor of chiropractic in clinical practice? This critical stage of your career should not be be taken lightly or blindly. Your first business decisions as a chiropractor can have massive impacts on your success as a practitioner and shape the entire direction of where you take your clinical practice. Much of the decision making will come from internal self-awareness of what you want to achieve with your career goals. Having sound, fundamental business know-how and anecdotal experience on common business practices will help you successfully launch your vision from a concept into a thriving, profitable practice. Register before February 28th for big savings on the seminar and gain invaluable knowledge on how to approach what’s worrying new grads the most.