Education for a Diverse and Integrating Market
Chiropractic's ultimate acceptance within the health-care system will require that its practitioners' offerings match market needs. At NYCC, we emphasize academic preparation for careers in a variety of settings, in response to the profession's rapid diversification. By the same token, out of a respect for their individual callings, we continue to fully support those students who choose to practice in traditional, stand-alone chiropractic practices. We are expanding offerings that encourage positions in research, traditional academic settings, health-care administration, and health-policy decision-making. As the marketplace expands, we are there to greet it, and to help prepare those doctors who will be occupying myriad exciting new roles. Internships successfully introducing our students to the military's excellent health-care facilities amounted to a big first step.
Achieving Clinical Competence: Partnering With the Military
In an effort to promote greater experiential education and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, we created exciting new chiropractic internship programs: one at the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, Md., and another at the United States Marine Base at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. The programs, run under the auspices of the United States Navy, take place at two of 13 original Department of Defense (DoD) demonstration project sites. Student interns provide chiropractic care to naval personnel and rotate through various health-care departments, including internal medicine; neurology; orthopedics; podiatry; and radiology. The students' training tracks that of medical residents: They take histories, perform examinations and render treatment decisions. This training, overseen and provided by seasoned chiropractors at the naval hospitals, teaches a multidisciplinary health-care "team" approach that offers didactic educational and practical experience in a variety of health-care specialties. By the time our interns graduate, they are uniquely positioned to draw on their invaluable hospital experiences. Future projects, similar to those at Bethesda and LeJeune, hold promise for additional internship programs. Recently developed internship programs at quality civilian hospitals offer equally beneficial clinical opportunities.
Partnering With Civilian Hospitals
We are working diligently to prepare the best doctors of chiropractic in the world, and are not relying solely on military settings to teach additional clinical competence. These skills are also acquired in the private sector. Having established internship programs at Bethesda and Camp LeJeune, the college has also developed internship programs with Monroe Community Hospital, in affiliation with the University of Rochester Medical School, and with St. Joseph Hospital and Mercy Hospital in Rochester, New York. These collaborative relationships - pairing college with hospital - serve two important roles: Patients' ailments are relieved through chiropractic care, and chiropractic students get to witness firsthand how chiropractic care easily partners with quality medical treatment. As important to the educational mission as internships have proven, we also recognize the important role the college may assume in catering to the health-care needs of our students, faculty and community. Consequently, we are taking steps to offer quality integrative care on campus.
Service Begins at Home: An On-Campus, Integrated Health Facility
Service begins at home, and the actions people take at home often best disclose their true commitments. NYCC's construction of a new, on-campus, integrative health-care facility, to be completed July 1, serves as a visible demonstration of our deep-rooted commitment to integrative care, as well as offering our community a wonderful benefit. Our students will work in settings reflective of the growing trend in integrative care, assisting professionals who offer acupuncture, traditional Oriental medicine, massage therapy and medical care. NYCC's on-campus health-care facility aptly expresses how our students, faculty and staff value and engage one another; it also conveys the immense pride they share in core chiropractic principles.
Integrating Through Exposure
Although NYCC has strived aggressively for clinical integration through exciting internship programs and on-campus health-care capabilities, the college nonetheless acknowledges the importance of an interdisciplinary promotional component in its efforts to achieve complete integration. On Nov. 7, 2003, NYCC will join Beth Israel's Medical Center for Health and Healing in presenting a conference that explores the practical implementation of integrative medicine. The event, "Integrative Health-Care:An Allopathic/Chiropractic Collaboration," conducted at Beth Israel Medical Center's Podell Auditorium, will feature discussions on integrative health-care models by physicians and chiropractors - each presenting research in specific areas of expertise that speaks to the value of interdisciplinary cooperation. Emphasis is placed on clinically integrating the chiropractic and medical professions, and the value of teamwork between chiropractic educational institutions and medical teaching hospitals. I feel such teamwork leads inevitably to a jointly beneficial relationship that is critical to the effective integration of the medical and complementary health-care professions.
Serving the Public: Expanding Our Educational Offerings to Include Acupuncture
In our efforts to keep pace with an increasingly informed and receptive health-care public, NYCC sought and received approval from the New York State Board of Regents to administer upstate New York's first master of science programs in acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM). In addition, we have added a bachelor of professional studies degree program, with a major in life sciences. The AOM coursework is, of course, offered to complement our longstanding and highly regarded doctor of chiropractic degree program. We will continue to explore and pursue partnerships with both integrative and traditional institutions of higher education, jointly offering master's-level programs in public health, health-care administration and geriatrics. Additional offerings should, of course, survive the scrutiny and rigors of science. We are keeping pace by significantly expanding our research programs, and have hired highly qualified research faculty to work in our well-equipped research laboratories.
Research and Validation
Our research concentration currently spans numerous topic areas, from randomized clinical trials that evaluate patient outcomes to detailed, technologically based studies that explain fundamental physiological, neurological and biomechanical mechanisms. The college's efforts have already borne fruit, having earned several research grants from national granting agencies, including NIH and FCER. In 2001, one of our research projects conducted in the biodynamics laboratory and headed by Dr. Don Dishman, earned first prize at the biennial congress of the World Federation of Chiropractic in Paris, France. Other laboratory trials examine regulatory function and the effects of chiropractic treatment on the autonomic system. A research program headed by Dr. Veronica Sciotti is performing groundbreaking work investigating the mechanisms responsible for producing chronically painful trigger points. With acupuncture enjoying a surge of interest, we are particularly anxious to carry out important scientific research that explains and further supports its health benefits.
Continued professional growth relies heavily on the scientific validation of our chiropractic and Oriental medicine principles, and at NYCC, we are doing something about it. The likelihood that a college will attract creative and competent researchers is enhanced when the college has already distinguished itself as a scholastic leader. NYCC is grooming the next generation of chiropractic researchers and scholars through its innovative and farsighted fellowship program.
Filling Tomorrow's Elite Professional Ranks
Scholars stoke the fires of science, and at NYCC, we are busy creating them. Having instituted and aggressively recruited qualified fellows for our new fellowship program, NYCC is encouraging recent DC graduates to earn master's degrees (at the college's expense) in areas of concentration that are of interest to both the chiropractor and the college. The program is designed to attract lifelong learners into the faculty ranks so that, ultimately, the college will have developed specialists who will teach undergraduate and graduate level programs, and scientists who will conduct cutting-edge investigations in the field of chiropractic. NYCC's selected Fellows receive annual stipends for their teaching services and pursue postgraduate educational opportunities that include master's and PhD degrees in nutrition, exercise physiology, health administration and radiology residency. Knowledge is most visibly powerful when it serves practical ends. With this in mind, we remind ourselves that success does not lie in creating scholars alone, but in applying that knowledge to the service of others. Our hosting of the upcoming Special Olympics is but one example of that commitment.
Community Leadership and Service
We are thrilled at any opportunity to serve others. NYCC's sprawling campus, with its wonderful learning and athletic facilities, has been selected to host New York State's Special Olympic Games in 2003 and 2004. The Games, which are expected to draw over 1,200 athletes and coaches, provide a variety of Olympic-style sports for all children and adults with mental disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of skills and friendship with their families. Athletes will compete in bocce; cross-country running; cycling; equestrian events; golf; soccer; and softball. I am delighted that NYCC was chosen to host these exciting and worthwhile games, and plan to roll out the red carpet to spectators and athletes alike. Clearly, we are all winners.
Whether in the field of academics, or on the playing fields, as challenged athletes engage in growth-enhancing competition, NYCC relishes its unique opportunity to lead others and share its rich resources with the local community. The college annually hosts the nationally acclaimed Women's Hall of Fame event, and its outstanding gymnasium, pool, golf course and recreational facilities attract an enthusiastic public. The new on-campus, integrative health-care facility described above is simply the latest in a series of community offerings.
Let there be no doubt: NYCC is summoning its significant resources and embarking on an exciting course, turning good ideas into solid programs with real-life benefits. As quality guides its progress, visionary administrators and an unmatched faculty are seeing the journey through. I thank this group of wonderfully talented people for our extraordinary achievements; frankly, I find it tremendously gratifying! We are pleased that the entire chiropractic profession benefits from the many educational initiatives we have undertaken on behalf of our students, our patients and our community.
Frank J. Nicchi, DC, MS
President, New York Chiropractic College
Seneca Falls, New York