How to Choose the Best Chiropractor for Your Injury

Chiropractic treatment is proven effective in the treatment of several different injuries. Whether you are suffering from chronic headaches or muscle spasms, if you’ve been involved in a car accident or suffering from too many hours in front of a laptop – chiropractic treatment can help. However, researching chiropractors and treatment options is akin to finding any other medical assistance, and an injured individual must be particular in finding the best chiropractor of his or her injury.

Understand How a Chiropractor Is Certified

The best chiropractor for your injury treatment should hold some qualification to perform adjustments and provide treatment advice. A certified chiropractor is required to complete a stringent program called a Doctor of Chiropractic. A DC after the chiropractor’s name denotes this educational requirement and certification, similar to a MD or JD, for medical doctor and juris doctor, respectively. Usually you can determine a chiropractor’s level of education and type of certification by a quick online search, but if it isn’t specified on a website or industry referral, feel free to ask.

The specific field of study or specialization of a certification program, and potential benefit of a specific qualification to your improvement, varies by injury. Some of the possible areas of focus include pharmacology, gross anatomy, and neurology. And there are many others that deal with a specific area of the body or method of treatment.

Be Scrupulous About the Technique and Treatments Used

In the world of modern medicine the same illness or injury can be treated through different techniques and approaches. For example, if you see a doctor with complaints of lower back pain, one could prescribe a prescription drug, while the other recommends a specific lifestyle change. In many instances, these treatment plans are divisive, but both can be medically sound way to advise and treat a patient.

The same differences in technique and treatment exist among chiropractors. Returning to the issue of lower back pain, it’s entirely possible that two chiropractors will recommend and use two different techniques to treat the same pain. You should know and understand a chiropractor’s preferred technique before you arrive for your first correction or treatment.

It could be helpful for your particular injury to see a chiropractor that offers additional treatments, such as acupuncture or massage therapy. Other treatments that might be offered by a chiropractor, or someone in the chiropractic office, are interferential electric muscle stimulation, cryotherapy, sensory deprivation, counseling for emotional issues, chronic stress, or on nutritional information, and other alternative therapies.

Understand How the Treatments Will Be Structured

Before your first chiropractic treatment, and for every treatment after that, the best chiropractor for your injury will have an intended, but malleable, treatment plan. This treatment plan should be shared with you.

Some of the information a chiropractor should relay is the duration of each treatment and overall timeframe of your treatments. Within the initial meeting with a chiropractor you should know if the recommended treatment plan should take weeks or months. A chiropractor might be unwilling to provide an exact outline of your treatment, but should at least form a rough estimate based on your symptoms.

Be open to a proposed treatment plan and duration of corrections, as the best chiropractor for a particular injury may have an approach very different from what you anticipated.

It’s a Very Personal Decision

While these recommendations and tips for choosing the best chiropractor may inform your online search or give you direction, ultimately you choice in chiropractor is a personal decision. Skill and technique will always be important, critical even, but finding a good personality fit and working with a chiropractor you trust are equally essential.

When it comes to your recovery, you need a chiropractor that offers good advice, in an understandable and useable manner. Weighing these and other subjective considerations is a big step towards choosing the chiropractor for your injury.

Dr. Darren Faherty D.C.

In 2004, Dr. Darren Faherty graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Biology from UWEC - University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. Dr. Darren continued education at the highly esteemed University of Western States (formerly Western States Chiropractic College) where he obtained his chiropractic degree in 2007. He has been helping people recover from injuries and return to their normal lifestyles ever since.