The wild midwest...

ACA Sports Chiropractic Conference

This past Halloween weekend was spent on the road to the Midwest.  Mat, Ryan and Tyler are some friends of mine who are currently in clinic phase back on main campus in Seneca Falls.  They picked me up on early Friday morning, and we made the 14 hour drive out (one way) to St. Louis, Missouri for the 2009 ACA Chiropractic Symposium.  Nothing like a road trip in a pick up truck (thanks Barker!)

This annual event is put on the American Chiropractic Association, designed as a symposium for practicing chiropractors and students to meet.  Chiropractors can earn continuing education credits, while students get to network and learn the latest updates in the profession.  I have to give credit to Ryan and Ty for pulling me to go on this crusade of a drive.  It turned out to be a great experience. 

There are different “tracks” that participants can attend.  This includes “Diagnosis and Management of Internal Disorders”, to “Business and Practice Management Strategies” to “Sports Chiropracic”.  Tyler and I were keen on the Sports Chiropractic.  Each “track” includes a series of presentations, meetings and discussions from different speakers on each particular specialty area of chiropractic.

For students, this was a great event!  The price was very reasonable for students ($50 if I remember correctly for three full days) and it included all the presentations and published materials from ALL the different learning “tracks”, even if you did not attend them or sign up for them.  There were many free giveaways including the highly coveted ICD-9 coding/billing manual handbook.  A vendor room gave an opportunity for different products and merchandise to be on display and demonstrated.  Most impressive I found however, were some of the presentations made at the Sports Chiropractic sessions.  This included up to date research on “Conservative Management of Tedinopathies” and “Chiropractic Nutritional Management of Patients”.  More hands on practical sessions included topics revolving on functional exercise training, sport specific and tactical/occupational specific training, scapula-thoracic/should diagnosis and rehabilitation, an outlook on Olympic team sports chiropractic and even the role of sports chiropractic in the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies World Series championship team.  Chiropractic students should try to attend these kinds of events as much as possible not only because it links real world applications to lessons at the college level, but they can be fun.  Also for this price, this event was a steal!  (from a student’s perspective at least)

Ps.  A big thanks to Joe Kupa and Jay Will up at Logan Chiropractic College for letting us stay in their living room.  That was a huge play fellas!

Pps.  Thanks also to the security guard at Logan College who let us park our pick up truck in front of the school fountain, while we wandered around like tourists.  That is because…we are tourists.