Reorganizational Healing: A Paradigm for the Advancement of Wellness, Behavior Change, Holistic Practice, and Healing

Moving towards a contemporary chiropractic professional identity

Since the inception of the chiropractic profession, debate has continued on differing practice objectives and philosophical approaches to patient care. While the political and academic leaders of the profession continue to dominate the discourse, little is known on the perspectives of the everyday practising chiropractor on their professional identity. In this paper, professional identity within the profession of chiropractic was evaluated using a systematised search strategy of the literature from the year 2000 through to May 2019. Initially 562 articles were sourced, of which 24 met the criteria for review. The review confirmed three previously stated professional identity subgroups; two polarised approaches and a centrist or mixed view. The musculoskeletal biomedical approach is in contrast to the vertebral subluxation vitalistic practice approach. Whilst these three main chiropractic identity subtypes exist, within the literature the terminology used to describe them differs. Research aimed at categorising the chiropractic profession identity into exclusive subtypes found that at least 20% of chiropractors have an exclusive vertebral subluxation focus. However, deeper exploration of the literature shows that vertebral subluxation is an important practice consideration for up to 70% of chiropractors. Patient care with a musculoskeletal spine focus is dominant in clinical practice. This review found that practising chiropractors consider themselves to be primary care or primary contact practitioners with a broad scope of practice across a number of patient groups not limited to musculoskeletal management. Across the research, there is a marked difference in the categories of practice objectives evaluated, and future research could examine the relatedness of these. Additionally, future research could explore the professional identity construct over time and within different practice contexts to help facilitate the progression of the profession.

Chiropractors' Perspectives on the Meaning and Assessment of Quality of Life Within Their Practice in New Zealand: An Exploratory Qualitative Study

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding on what quality of life (QOL) and its assessment means to chiropractors in everyday practice.

METHODS

This study captured chiropractors' perspectives on the QOL construct and its assessment using a qualitative descriptive methodology that comprised 2 focus groups, each with 4 participants using semi-structured, open-ended questioning. Participants from Aotearoa, New Zealand, were also asked to evaluate 4 QOL patient-reported outcome measurements from a clinical perspective.

RESULTS

Two of the participants were faculty at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic, 5 were in full-time practice, and 1 was practicing part time. Using qualitative content analysis, 3 main themes were identified. These chiropractors perceived that patients have misconceptions about how chiropractic can affect QOL. They lacked clarity in communicating QOL and its related concepts to establish a clinically meaningful patient encounter. Finally, there is uncertainty in how and when to measure QOL, which appears to affect how they discuss and assess QOL in practice.

CONCLUSION

There is a complex combination of factors that makes communication regarding QOL challenging. This exploratory qualitative study helps to understand the challenges faced in how and when to communicate and assess QOL more effectively in chiropractic practice.

Wellness Pursuit and Slow Life Seeking Behaviors: Moderating Role of Festival Attachment

Slow lifestyles have become a way for individuals to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. Moreover, along with wellness and slow food, slow life seeking is emerging as an area of study, though little research has been studied at Slow Life Festivals (SLFs) associated with consumers’ wellness pursuits, slow life seeking, and perceptions of slow food. To address this gap, this study examined visitors’ decision-making processes using an extended theory of planned behavior (ETPB) by incorporating wellness pursuit, slow life seeking, and perceptions of slow food at an SLF. Thus, this study developed a theoretically comprehensive framework by applying field survey. Results revealed significant impacts of visitors’ wellness pursuits and slow life seeking on their decision-making, indicating that wellness and slow life were important factors to consider for SLF management. The research further identified the perception of slow food as a mediator in predicting behavioral intentions. Results further demonstrated a strong relationship between wellness pursuit and perception of slow food for highly attached visitors while revealing a significant relationship between slow life seeking and perception of slow food for less attached visitors. Consequently, this study shed significant light on our understanding of why visitors intend to revisit SLFs.

The Chiropractic Vertebral Subluxation Part 10: Integrative and Critical Literature From 1996 and 1997

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss the history of chiropractic vertebral subluxation (CVS) during 1996 and 1997. The literature during this period offered critical and integrative models emphasized by a need for research into operational and functional definitions.

DISCUSSION

Several integrative approaches emerged, from Rome's 296 synonyms to Bergman's Pain/Tenderness, Asymmetry/Alignment, Range of Motion Abnormality, Tissue Tone, Texture, Temperature Abnormality, and Special Tests (PARTS) analysis adopted by the profession in the United States. Other noteworthy contributions included Ruch's Atlas of Common Subluxations, Epstein's introduction of network spinal analysis, and Kent's review of CVS models. Boone's introduction of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research was accompanied by his 3-part model with Dobson. These years also included the paradigm statement of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges, which was adopted by the American Chiropractic Association, International Chiropractors Association, and World Federation of Chiropractic. Two other papers included Nelson's critique of the CVS paradigm and Keating's 1996 "Hunt for the Subluxation."

CONCLUSION

The CVS reached a new stage of complexity and critique and offered new directions for research, integration, and development.

The Network Spinal Wave as a Central Pattern Generator

Objectives: This article explains the research on a unique spinal wave visibly observed in association with network spinal analysis care. Since 1997, the network wave has been studied using surface electromyography (sEMG), characterized mathematically, and determined to be a unique and repeatable phenomenon.

Methods: The authors provide a narrative review of the research and a context for the network wave's development.

Results: The sEMG research demonstrates that the movement of the musculature of the spine during the wave phenomenon is electromagnetic and mechanical. The changes running along the spine were characterized mathematically at three distinct levels of care. Additionally, the wave has the mathematical properties of a central pattern generator (CPG).

Conclusions: The network wave may be the first CPG discovered in the spine unrelated to locomotion. The mathematical characterization of the signal also demonstrates coherence at a distance between the sacral to cervical spine. According to mathematical engineers, based on studies conducted a decade apart, the wave itself is a robust phenomenon and the detection methods for this coherence may represent a new measure for central nervous system health. This phenomenon has implications for recovery from spinal cord injury and for reorganizational healing development.

Five keys to real transformation in health care

Transformation in health care requires a deeply holistic approach. Natural leaders of such a transformation are the complementary and alternative medicine practitioners who already share a vision of wellness, prevention, and optimal human function. Central to this shared vision is lifestyle change for patients and practitioners. Yet, to change a lifestyle is to change a self. Assisting individuals to transform their very sense of self in order to live healthier, more fulfilling lives centered on flourishing requires several important keys. Visionary and unified leaders are the first key. Structural support through coordination of health clinics locally and nationally is the second key. This can be optimized by utilizing initiatives of the new Affordable Health Care Act, because it provides a potential impetus for deep structural changes. An expanded evidence base for multifactorial approaches to wellness lifestyles is the third key. A reorganizational orientation with an emphasis on the right timing of transformation is the fourth key. The fifth key is an Integral map, which brings together the personal, behavioral, cultural, and social domains. By utilizing such a map, one ensures that no aspect of the transformative revolution at hand slips away due to any misplaced focus, such as emphasizing only on the things we can see with our eyes. By embracing the essence of transformation in terms of a wholeness to all reality, an evolutionary unifying field with interior depth and exterior expression, health care is redefined more authentically.

The healers journey: a literature review

While much important research has gone into identifying the efficacy and importance that healing interventions can make to healthcare this paper seeks to synthesise some of the core themes of the processes that healers go through in their journey to becoming a healer. Through the process of a literature review of seminal texts and current literature the paper identifies the key themes of, healer as facilitator, connecting to sources of healing, an appreciation of the healee, an expanded sense of spirituality, an acknowledgement of the wider archetypal significance of the healer, the importance of the wound and the role that these can play in the process of personal transformation and also acceptance. In doing so it hopes to offer that the journey of the healer plays a crucial role in guiding the quality of the healing that healers share in a healing encounter.

Medical utilization among wellness consumers

This study investigates conventional medicine utilization by wellness-motivated, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) consumers. While CAM consumers are typically characterized as high health care utilizers, negative correlations have been found between CAM-based wellness programs and the consumption of conventional medical care. We use a nationally representative sample to analyze both illness- and wellness-motivated CAM users, with an interest in whether CAM therapies used for wellness replace conventional medicine, thus potentially offering cost offsets. Results indicate that motivation for CAM use is neither associated with a lower probability nor a lower rate of conventional medicine utilization. Increasingly, individuals, workplaces, and governments incorporate wellness programs involving CAM modalities into health care and policy; as the conventional and unconventional medical spheres begin to integrate and influence one another, understanding our pluralistic medical environment and its consumers will better enable policy makers to balance health and wellness initiatives with economic imperatives.

Medicina moderna: rumo à prevenção, à cura, ao bem-estar e à longevidade

A medicina moderna tem realizado muitas coisas nos campos de doenças infecciosas e de emergências para assistir a cura. Na maior parte dos outros campos, ela visa, sobretudo, ao controle, que é outro nome para o tratamento paliativo. A farmacologia, na qual se inclui a psicofarmacologia, é igualmente dirigida ao controle e ao alívio. Está na hora de profissionais da área e pesquisadores voltarem-se decisivamente para a prevenção e para a cura. Ademais, o outro grande desafio da medicina moderna é a longevidade aliada ao bem-estar. Avanços em vacinas contra hipertensão, diabetes, câncer etc. merecem atenção, bem como o papel da meditação, yoga, espiritualidade etc. na prevenção de doenças em vários níveis. Pesquisas sobre longevidade, mudanças no estilo de vida e centenários saudáveis merecem um exame especialmente minucioso na busca dos fatores que contribuem para a longevidade com bem-estar. Um olhar de perto para a medicina complementar e alternativa é necessário para encontrar modelos apropriados que esta possa vir a ter, à parte seus grandes discursos ou sua hostilidade para com o cuidado médico tradicional. A medicina é uma manifestação do Eros humano, e não deve tornar-se instrumento de seu Tanatos. Ela deve realizar seu verdadeiro potencial, de forma que Eros prevaleça, e Tanatos prevaleça apenas finalmente, não prematuramente.

Modern Medicine: Towards Prevention, Cure, Well-being and Longevity

Modern medicine has done much in the fields of infectious diseases and emergencies to aid cure. In most other fields, it is mostly control that it aims for, which is another name for palliation. Pharmacology, psychopharmacology included, is mostly directed towards such control and palliation too. The thrust, both of clinicians and research, must now turn decisively towards prevention and cure. Also, longevity with well-being is modern medicine's other big challenge. Advances in vaccines for hypertension, diabetes, cancers etc, deserve attention; as also, the role of meditation, yoga, spirituality etc in preventing disease at various levels. Studies on longevity, life style changes and healthy centenarians deserve special scrutiny to find what aids longevity with wellbeing. A close look at complementary and alternative medicine is needed to find any suitable models they may have, cutting aside their big talk and/or hostility towards mainstream medical care. Medicine is a manifestation of the human eros, and should not become a means of its thanatos. It must realise its true potential, so that eros prevails, and thanatos prevails only ultimately, not prematurely.