An Intercollegiate Comparison of Prevalence of Injuries Among Students During Technique Class from Five Chiropractic Colleges Throughout the World: A Preliminary Retrospective Study (Report‪)‬

Introduction Manipulation, or spinal adjusting in the broader sense, is the activity that most distinguishes the field of chiropractic from other health care professions (1). The acquisition of psychomotor skills used in the delivery of therapeutic interventions such as manipulation is an integral component of chiropractic education (2). All chiropractic colleges, irrespective of their ideology (i.e. the extent to which they emphasize traditional chiropractic philosophy) or their preferential use of a particular technique system (Palmer HIO, Thompson Terminal Point, Logan Basic and so on), devote considerable time to the teaching of 'Diversified' high-velocity, low amplitude (HVLA) manipulative skills (2). This requires students to willingly act as both 'doctor' and 'patient' in technique labs. However, since students possess novice skills, and since these manual therapies are often delivered in the absence of clinical necessity, there is the possibility that students may injure themselves during technique class, a concern that is often raised during discussions of the Technique Consortium of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC). (3-7) Indeed, many of the authors of this study, as well as the authors of the study by Macanuel et al (2) anecdotally report that they were injured during their undergraduate training. Moreover, there is a burgeoning body of knowledge in the peer-reviewed literature that indicates chiropractors and other manual therapists often injure themselves during either their undergraduate training or early in their professional careers. Since many of these injuries begin when the practitioner is a student, it is important to identify the frequency and characteristics of those injuries that do occur during his or her educational training in order to develop strategies to possibly avoid them.