Required clinical competencies: Wellness

Wellness is a “process of optimal functioning and creative adaptation involving all aspects of your life“. Wellness was added to the list of required clinical competencies for chiropractic colleges accredited by the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) in 2006 to be effective in February 2007. In the CCE Standards, the wellness competency has twenty one objectives: seven for attitudes -- e.g., “appreciate the broad social determinants of health”, -- nine for knowledge – e.g., “identify the minimum screening activities for health promotion”, -- and five for skills – e.g., “provide patient counseling for health promotion and assess the outcomes of this counseling“. We evaluated our current 10-trimester chiropractic curriculum to determine whether we are addressing all of these objectives. We found at LACC/SCUHS that we cover a lot of knowledge and many skills and some attitudes; however, collectively we cover all of the objectives to at least some extent throughout our curriculum. Among the courses offered that address the wellness objectives are Evolution of Healthcare, Biochemical Nutrition, Community Health, Clinical Nutrition, Physiological Therapeutics, and Clinical Internship.

Where many challenges remain is through our clinical applications; however our faculty have advanced degrees in Education, Kinesiology, Public Health, Workplace Ergonomics, Sports Medicine, Orthopedics and Neurology. The outlook for our students and their patients is healthy.