Standardized care practices for Chiropractic providers during humanitarian missions to developing and Chiropractically developing nations: The pros and cons

Introduction: Short-term humanitarian missions are increasing in both the number of countries served and the frequency in which they are occurring. There has been an increase of about twenty five percent in volunteer service missions across the professions in the last 5-10 years. Licensed Chiropractors and Chiropractic educational institutions are embarking on these journeys. Are we providing quality, safe and ethical care to these patients? Methods: A comprehensive article review was done to review current trends of health care professions and organizations in determining standard practices of care in developing nations for short term mission trips. Results: There is little published research regarding practice standards of care during short term humanitarian mission trips. There are numerous opinion articles written by providers living in areas where Medical Tourism is occurring and successes by participants of mission trips. Conclusions: There are no guidelines in the Chiropractic professional literature addressing the level of competence or education of these providers including student participants. There is no current method of accountability to other health care providers or patients in the areas being served by these mission trips. It is imperative that we as a profession evaluate the need to further address standard practices of care and their impact during short term mission trips, not only for the patient but for the educational community, local chiropractic organizations and accrediting agencies.