Chiropractic Economics NWHSU feature: Chiropractic, Massage Get Closer

Integrative care has become the mantra in modern health care. It brings together health professionals from different backgrounds and perspectives to use their sometimes widely different skills to treat health consumers, putting patients’ needs first.

It’s a job that all health professionals might agree is still easier said than done. Efforts are underway on many fronts to deliver on the value and promise of integrative care.

A new generation of health professional
“It’s what we are all about and what we are trying to do with the next generation of health professionals,” says Michele Renee, a chiropractor who also is a massage therapist. Renee directs Northwestern Health Sciences University’s massage program and also recently took on an additional title: director of integrative care. “It’s a reflection of how we teach and how we want to work, here on campus, at our clinics and as we train our students to practice in many different locations,” she says.

In particular, she says, chiropractic and massage therapy — her two disciplines — have lots of opportunities to work together and make a difference for patients.

“For a chiropractor, being in an environment with a massage therapist who has expertise in soft-tissue work — it’s just a different world and not the same at all as what a chiropractor has traditionally learned and practiced,” she says. “And the opposite is true as well. A massage therapist can learn and do a lot working alongside a chiropractor. When they work side by side, they gain a new appreciation for each other’s skills and how they can benefit their patient. In many ways, it makes the work of treating the patient so much better and also so much easier.”

Read the full article in Chiropractic Economics Magazine on page 44.