Parker Seminars Las Vegas – January 2001
By Michael Dorausch, D.C.
The following text was compiled from Dr. Fabrizio Mancini’s opening speech for this weekends Parker Seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This is a real honor for me to welcome you to the Parker Seminars here in Las Vegas, which is really our annual homecoming for our seminars. It’s our largest seminar every time; we meet six times a year.
I tell you I had an incredible journey the last year and a half. But I’ve been sharing with you and in front of you that information every seminar. I’ve been telling you a little bit about the incredible things that are happening not only in chiropractic, but also at the Parker college and the Parker Seminars.
I served on the Board of Trustees, that’s how I got to know the board members of the college. And when they asked if I would take this position I was extremely honored because how do you follow the example of somebody like Dr. Jim Parker? But then, nature has a way of naturally bringing the right answers to whatever challenges life has to offer. And even though I doubted whether this was the right decision for my life right now I knew that had to listen to a much higher power, it’s that innate within myself that guides my actions. And what it came out with was that I needed to do this. And I can tell you it’s been the hardest, toughest, most challenging year and a half, and you can ask my wife she can verify, that I’ve ever had but it also has been the most incredible journey in my whole life because I’ve grown, I’ve changed, I’ve been able to expose myself to individuals that I never thought I would be able to be in the same room with. And what I’m learning is that there’s so much within me that is within you.
Sometimes we look at ourselves and we see the leaders in our profession, which many of them are here and you’ll see, and we’re not any different. The only difference is the fact that they are doing something about it and maybe we are not. Maybe we don’t feel that we have what it takes to do it. The important thing is that it’s all within ourselves. We’re only a reflection of the universe.
Chiropractic has been around for 105 plus years. Right now we have 18 chiropractic colleges in the United States and Canada. We have more chiropractic colleges opening up in the United States; we have 18 chiropractic colleges outside of the United States. Outside of the United States is going to be developing much faster than the United States and Canada primarily because there is such a hunger.
Take Mexico for instance, 100 million people and 45 chiropractors. We just had a seminar in Cancun, Mexico in where we brought all of the chiropractors from Latin America to one place and we had a panel of about 12 different countries and everybody had a chance to say what was happening in their country with chiropractic. They are starving for support. All they kept saying is “we are one or two, there are millions of people here, we can’t do it all.” And then I see individuals that are graduating saying I want to go pioneer a nation. I want to go and be a pioneer. We have a young generation of chiropractors coming into the forefront and we have to nurture these people so they can go and explore and continue to develop this great profession of ours.
But the amazing thing for me is that I get to sit around with all the college presidents, and I’ll tell you, you have some great leaders. The main thing that I’m learning is that at Parker College we have a Board of Trustees that is so innovative because that’s what Dr. Jim created. He selected these people because they were individuals that were innovative. They have been so supportive of everything that I’ve tried to implement and specifically in trying to do the right thing for the graduates. Let me tell you about one of those things just so you understand a little bit about what we are doing in the college because it reflects exactly what we are doing here in the seminars.
One of the main things we do is that we make sure we brainstorm and re-evaluate chiropractic education and what may be missing, and one of the first things we discovered is the fact that we only have about one year or a year and four months of internship in clinic. And you can’t develop yourself enough on the maturity level, clinical skill level, technique level, in a year and a half, so what we came up with was that we started a pilot program for one trimester to start clinic on Day 1.
It was so successful that it’s part of the curriculum today. I just went to the ACC meeting in Fort Lauderdale in November and I heard another chiropractic college president saying that because of that they are now going to do the same in their school and after that meeting, four other college presidents have said they are looking into doing that as well.
Now imagine this, from day one you’re going to be groomed in the clinical skills, and the maturity in serving people because at Parker we have a phrase, “we don’t want to just develop you as a doctor, we want to develop you as a leader, as a healer.” And what is a healer? A healer is an individual that not only understands himself or herself, so that they can then give back to humanity, a healer is somebody that is beyond the clinical. They are somebody that operates on a spiritual level rather than a physical level. A healer is somebody that is mature, somebody that loves their patients unconditionally, somebody that has the compassion to serve greater than their compulsion to survive. That’s what we’re trying to produce. That’s one thing.
Then we started brainstorming again and we said okay what else is going on, what else can we do for our students? And the number one challenge in a chiropractic college is how do you teach the basic science with a chiropractic application? So we rounded up the basic science Ph.D.’s and the chiropractors and the M.D.s and everybody that works together and we put them all in one building. And now we have in services every day for about one hour in which the chiropractic faculty talks with Ph.D.’s.
Out of that we have two Ph.D.’s enrolling in our chiropractic program to become chiropractors because they learned that it’s far more than what they’re teaching in the basic sciences. And we’re teaching every course at Parker College with an emphasis as to “how does that apply as chiropractic.” That is something that is a tremendous challenge because we have faculty with all these names and all these titles, but do they own the concept of what chiropractic is? Can they respect our profession enough to say “you know, I’m going to take what I learned in medical school and I am going to take this thing called chiropractic and make it the best thing that I can and I’m going to teach our students how to be that.” That’s the kind of thing that is exciting for me. I said to the board that my job was not that hard even though I had to face a few challenges coming in because I have the talent around me to make it happen.
Dr. Jim created a sharing concept. Everybody is here to help you, but we can’t do it for you. I want you to think about our future. What is the vision of our future? Where are we going in the next 25 or 50 years? What are the trends that we are seeing? The trend is going towards wellness? The trend is going to be, “are you serving the family?” Are we adjusting our children? Are we bringing them into the office? The future is going to be that. We are going to be working more together and we are going to be aligning ourselves with other health-care disciplines. Not because we are embracing their belief system, but because they are going to be embracing our belief system. They are recognizing that the people are following us, why? It’s because what we have to offer is health-care value.
Don’t let any limitations stop you from fulfilling your dreams. Thank you so much.
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Note: I am at the Rio Suites Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada for the Parker Seminars. This week I will be here gathering news, conducting interviews, taking lots of photos, capturing video, and recording audio from the seminar floor.
Capturing the essence of the chiropractic experience here is my goal throughout this weekend. Chiropractic fellowships such as the event this weekend brings out the best in all of those that attend.
Planet Chiropractic would like to thank Parker Seminars and Dr. Fabrizio Mancini for the hospitality they have offered. This weekend will provide a supportive, welcoming atmosphere of learning, sharing and understanding and I hope to successfully capture that experience and bring it to you during the next four days.
planetc1.com-news @ 7:49 am | Article ID: 979228180
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