The internet is now an indelible part of each of our lives. Young children, grandparents, and everyone in between rely on the World Wide Web on a daily basis. We communicate, shop, learn, and entertain ourselves in front of a screen. Therefore, as a chiropractor, you may not see the link between having your hands on patients’ spines and the virtual world of the internet.
Sure, you can return a few emails, Tweet about what you ate for lunch, read some articles, or maybe get some CE credits; but these things are all about YOU. By using the internet for these tasks, you are comfortable knowing that you can keep up with the technology of the day. Here’s the question… What has the internet done for CHIROPRACTIC?
“Well,” you say,” what about all of the videos on YouTube or the posts on Facebook that I’ve read or the new patients that I’ve gotten from my Google Ads?” Again, that is about YOU, not about the profession as a whole, our true impact on society or our position within the health care paradigm. So, let me get to my point.
Years ago, an intellectual think-tank known as TED (now known as TED.com) was founded by Richard Saul Wurman. The greatest minds: inventors, scientists, doctors, musicians, educators, humorists, etc. were invited to come to a TED conference and share. In fact, the tagline of the company is “Ideas Worth Spreading.”
Using the power of the internet, TED.com has developed an army of followers. People, from the CEO’s of the largest worldwide corporations to homemakers in the smallest towns, travel to these conferences, or better yet, log on to TED.com to watch the most recent video posts from the conferences held around the world. The unselfish open-sharing of ideas, for free, is an international phenomenon… with one dreadfully sad reality.
If you go to the search bar on TED.com and type in the word “chiropractic,” guess how many hits come back from the hundreds and hundreds of lectures that have been posted from around the planet since TED’s inception in 1984?
ZERO!
Are you kidding me? A profession that puts nothing into the body, takes nothing out of the body, requires no laboratory, no surgical center, no pharmacy and no side effects and gets PHENOMENAL results in assisting people with their health care challenges is not even mentioned on an international resource regarding the strongest thinkers and most valuable ideas?
Am I the only one who is freaking out here? For 116 years, we have persevered: struggling, evolving, and surviving and we are not even a blip on the world’s screen?
THAT IS NOT OKAY!
At the end of last year, the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE dedicated an issue to health and wellness. They had articles from the leaders of the “wellness movement” regarding human physiology, nutrition, genetics, and alternative treatments. Guess how much space was dedicated to chiropractic…
NONE!
A few months ago, the University of Miami held a wellness symposium, which featured educators on the future of health care, alternative treatment and wellness. Was a chiropractor on the panel of speakers?
NO!
Time to wake up people… if you only care about your little practice in your little town and your little life, no worries - you’ll be sure to survive. If, however, you care about the fact that our profession is living a lie, then the glaring reality has to sink in. We simply are not making enough of an impact on our nation’s view of health. If we are not included in these conversations, it is because no one thinks we have anything valuable to say. Would you invite a kindergartener to participate in a nuclear physics seminar?
We are never going to be invited to these tables, nor see chiropractic reach its true height if we are screaming different stories at each other. We need to find our story – ONE STORY. This story can be open to various ideas regarding what chiropractic is and should be, but overall, we won’t be accepted until we accept each other. It’s as simple as that.
CHIROPRACTIC IS CERTAINLY AN IDEA WORTH SPREADING. I’ll race you to TED!