Are Councils on Chiropractic Education expectations of chiropractic graduates changing for the better: a comparison of similarities and differences of the graduate competencies of the Chiropractic Council on Education-Australasia from 2009 to 2017

Abstract

Background: The Council on Chiropractic Education Australasia (CCE-A) is tasked with assessment and accreditation of chiropractic programs (CPs) in the Australasian community. To achieve this process the CCE-A has developed educational standards and graduate competencies which include minimum expectations of graduates prior to entry into the workforce. We sought to explore if these are changing overtime, and if so are these changes for the better. Method: The CCE-A 2009 and 2017 Competency Standards were located and downloaded. The competencies were placed into tables for a comparative analyses in a systematic manner to enable the identification of similarities and differences. In addition, word counts were conducted for the most commonly occurring words and this took place in December 2019. Results: The 2017 competency standards were over three times smaller than the previous standards 2009 standards. More similarities than differences between the old and the new standards were found. There were 18 additions to the 2017 graduate competencies with many that were in unison with contemporary aspects of healthcare such as patient centred-care, respect for practitioner-patient boundaries and patient sexual orientation, transitioning patients to selfmanagement, and consideration of improving lifestyle options. Some competencies were not bought forward to the new standards and included, among others, students being competent in screening for mental health conditions, an expectation to discuss cost of care, re-evaluating and monitoring patients at each visit, and knowing when to discharge patients. The competencies continued to be silent on known issues within the chiropractic profession of a lack of a definition for chiropractic that would inform scope of practice and the presence of vitalism within CPs.

Investigating attitudes, skills, and use of evidence-based practice among Norwegian chiropractors; a national cross-sectional study

“…In both the US and Canadian studies, the chiropractors were relatively older and had more years in practice than our sample. This is an important point of difference, as our analysis revealed that years in practice was negatively associated with EBP use; probably because more recently completed chiropractic education programmes are more likely to incorporate content on evidence-based practise [ 25 , 26 ].On the other hand, our analysis indicated that being older was significantly associated with higher use of EBP, which does appear somewhat contradictory. Although there is no clear explanation for this paradox, it is possible that the small number of chiropractors in our sample aged 60 years or above, could have been behaviourally different than the population of chiropractors in this age group, and thus, may not be representative of chiropractors aged 60 years or older.…”