Skip to main contentHomeA-Z indexContact usLibrary Login

Site map

• Home
  • Our Organisation
    • Science Engineering and Technology
      • Schools
        • Health Sciences
          • About
            • Disciplines
              • Chiropractic
                • Programs and Courses
                • About
                  • Chiropractic Teaching Clinics
                  • RMIT Chiropractic Videos
                  • The Chiropractic Unit - History
                • Research Specialities
                • People and Contacts

About

Chiropractic supports:

• first professional teaching in the Bachelor of Health Science (Chiropractic) and Master of Clinical Chiropractic
• postgraduate research as either a Master or Doctoral degree
• Chiropractic teaching clinic

Please contact Chiropractic by Telephone +61 3 9925 7596 or E-mail anna.bazzano@rmit.edu.au

About chiropractic

Gentle, hands-on chiropractic health care began with the work of D. D. Palmer in the United States of America in 1895.Now in its second century, chiropractic is the largest non-drug, hands-on health care profession in the Western world and is increasingly taken up around the globe, with great interest developing in Europe and Asia.

A chiropractor is a primary contact, primary health care practitioner who practises chiropractic as a science based healing discipline concerned with the pathogenesis, diagnosis, therapeutics and prophylaxis of functional disturbances, pathomechanical states, and related pain syndromes of the neuromusculoskeletal system. Chiropractic practice is characterised by:

• Manual diagnosis and therapy, primarily the adjustment, which maximises the therapeutic use of touch
• Health promotion in which the doctor is teacher, maximising patient involvement and minimising doctor intervention
• The maximisation of the patient's belief they will recover

• Legitimisation of the patient and their sick role
• A humanitarian, egalitarian approach to the patient characterised by the qualities of empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard

The philosophy of chiropractic holds that the human body has restorative processes to maintain its natural state of health. Under this philosophy, the role of the physician is to assist the individual’s natural curative processes. Chiropractic management is directed towards maintaining, improving, restoring or enhancing the health of the patient through the use of the chiropractic adjustment and related therapies, primarily to the musculoskeletal system, in order to affect the neural regulation of the body.

Chiropractic science is based on a paradigm that is holistic and integrative in focus as opposed to a mechanistic, reductionistic model that relies heavily on technological and biomedical intervention; however the chiropractic paradigm is viewed as no less valuable than, nor as a replacement for, the biomedical model. The chiropractic paradigm is based on a rational body of scientific literature which recognises the uniqueness of the relationship between neuromusculoskeletal dysfunction and physiological dysfunction, in contrast to the pathological and symptom based medical paradigm. In keeping with the spirit of the philosophy of science, both qualitative and quantitative methods are promoted by chiropractic educators in order to enhance the confidence and proficiency of graduates.

Chiropractic education at RMIT - history