Patient characteristics upon initial presentation to chiropractic teaching clinics – A descriptive study conducted at one university

Purpose: Clinical experiences providing students the opportunity to diagnose, manage and promote health and wellness among patients are an important component of chiropractic education. The purpose of our study was to examine the new patient population at the fee-for-service teaching clinics in comparison to the patient population of U.S. chiropractors.

Methods: All data were obtained exclusively from the electronic health record (EHR) system. All records identified as new patients presenting to the teaching clinics from October 1 through October 31, 2013, were included in the study. Variables of interest included clinic site, patient demographics (sex, age and race/ethnicity); blood pressure and body mass index (BMI); chief complaint and ICD-9 codes. Descriptive statistics were computed using SPSS (v. 22).

Results: A total of 224 new patients presented to the institution’s fee-for-service teaching clinics in the month of October 2013. The mean age was 37.3 yrs (range, 2 mo to 88 yrs). The average patient was a white male aged 31-50. Our clinic patients differed from the Practice Analysis data on U.S. chiropractors in the distribution of all demographic variables, due to a higher prevalence of males, a younger population, and a much higher prevalence of white patients in our clinics.

Conclusions: New patients in our fee-for-service teaching clinics appear to be dissimilar to those of U.S. chiropractic patients in general, in several important demographics, characteristics, and type of complaints. Continued efforts to provide interns more diversity of experience is important to ensure that they are well prepared for practice.