The Society for Promoting Chiropractic Education is leading change to improve access to chiropractic care by increasing the numbers of chiropractors. Chiropractors, students and chiropractic organisations are all involved in various ways to help SPCE promote chiropractic education throughout the UK and beyond.

The Society for Promoting Chiropractic Education (SPCE) aims:

Training

To establish more undergraduate programmes in universities

 

Students

To increase awareness of chiropractic as a career at the school level

 

1 Access to Care

We want to ensure that patients with back pain, neck pain and other musculoskeletal disorders have easy access to chiropractic care. There are not enough chiropractors in the UK or most of Europe. That means increasing the numbers of chiropractors to levels in other countries like the USA, Canada and Norway.

Access to good musculoskeletal care is even worse in other parts of the world. In developing nations there is virtually no chiropractic coverage at all despite the burden of disability due to back and neck pain being very high. We will actively pursue opportunities to start and support chiropractic programmes in developing nations too.

2 Training

We will encourage new programmes to be based on the model that chiropractors are primary contact practitioners able to work independently. This means that chiropractors should be trained to a sufficient level such as the integrated masters courses available in the UK.

3 Students

With new courses comes the need to encourage more school leavers to opt for a career as a chiropractor. To deliver this, we will develop presentation packs and careers materials for use in schools. We have already recruited chiropractors in various parts of the UK to deliver the presentations to school students and we shall support them in recruiting schools to participate in the programme.

4 Geography

Besides growing the number of courses in the UK we shall improve the geographical spread of universities offering chiropractic degrees. We shall continue identifying and targeting potential universities offering multi-professional learning which is important for integration into mainstream healthcare.

5 Quality

We shall support universities with consultancy, information and advice, in establishing these courses as well as helping with staffing and placements.

We shall continue to work closely with the General Chiropractic Council, the Royal College of Chiropractors and universities, to drive up education standards. This means that we shall help develop education standards that keep pace with the changing environment, especially with regard to technology and peoples’ work patterns.