Chiropractic Credentials

Ask the Chiropractor- Many people have asked me about my credentials.  More so now that I started this podcast.  I share with my credentials and about each one.  #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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- Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor.""Ask the Chiropractor" is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. All right, so today on"Ask the Chiropractor," I was recently asked about the letters after my name. A lot of people see my business card and they see my first name and last name, then a whole bunch of letters that come afterwards. So people want to know what do all these letters mean? What's this all about? So, I want to talk a little bit about chiropractic education and it's what we do after we graduate to continue to get, to learn more and more and more. So, yes, I'm a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. I have my Bachelor's of Science and my Doctorate of Chiropractic. So when someone says, "Hey, why do they call you a doctor?" Well, because I have a doctorate. Your medical doctor has a Doctorate of Medicine. Your orthopedic doctor is a doctor of osteopath, has a Doctrine of Osteopath. Your dentist has a DMD or DDS, which is a doctrine of dental sciences or doctor of, I don't even know what DMD stands for. I won't act like I do, but it's a doctorate, and that's why we call ourselves doctor. Currently, our president, Joe Biden, and his wife has a doctorate of education, so they call her Dr. Biden. So I have a doctorate in chiropractic, so that's why I call myself "Doctor,"'cause I've earned the award and I've earned the title. But to get my bachelor's of science, I went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and I went to Northern Illinois in DeKalb, before transferring to chiropractic school. My first year at chiropractic school counted from my last year of my bachelor's simultaneously. So rather than get a a degree at the school I was going to, I wanted to shorten my college life. So, I transferred into chiropractic school and got both at graduation. Chiropractic school is 10 trimesters long and it's 30 hours a trimester. So, we're cramming five years of school into three and one third year. So, it's intense, but we're all in it together. So those are the first letters after my name, my bachelor's of science, and my Doctrine of Chiropractic. Then I have these other three letters called LCP. It stands for Legion of Chiropractic Philosophers. See, chiropractic is an art, science, and philosophy. That's our three pillars of what chiropractic is. And so after I graduated, I wanted to be able to spend more time each of those three pillars. So the first one I did was philosophy. Now for this, I did a year course at Palmer College again, where we had speakers come in once a month, talk to us, and then we had to write a thesis. And at the end of this class, we had to defend our thesis against a panel of professors from Palmer College. So myself and my father, we actually took that together and we both got our LCP, Legion of Chiropractic Philosophers. If you ever see me at a chiropractic events at Palmer College, you might see a necklace around my neck with a medallion of a giant purple heart. We earned that medallion after we passed this course. So that's what that big purple heart would be. I don't know what you'd ever see me there, but I'm just sharing information with you. So I've earned my postgraduate certificate in philosophy, the art, science, and philosophy. Well, next I wanted to talk about the science of chiropractic. I got the philosophy. Now let's talk more about the science. That's actually what drives me. So, I took a class called the CCWP, making me a Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner. A lot of people go to the chiropractor for wellness. They want to stay well, they want to maintain wellness, and they want to avoid ever getting sick. They don't want to get sick and get well. They just don't want to get sick. So, I took this class called the CCWP, Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner. I did this, it was four intense courses with four textbooks, four weekends away. After each weekend we had an exam we had to pass. Then you go on the next weekend, the next week and the next weekend. The first one was just on general chiropractic and overall, the science behind coming in periodically to get tuned up as we call it. And then they also a written exam. Then we had to take the next one on eating right, and your diet, tried to have a natural diet and what did hunters and gatherers eat. What's healthy food? What's not healthy food? Supplementation and all the research and science that backs it up. Then we took another exam. Then we did one on exercise and lastly, we did one on emotions or emotional stress and how that plays into what happens and how we can help with those areas as a holistic doctor more than say a chiropractor, right? Because a chiropractor doesn't really sit down and tell you how to eat, what supplements to take. But I was asked those questions a lot by my patients, and if I say that thoughts, traumas, and toxins make your back go out, I should understand how each one of those works. So, I got my certification, my CCWP in that area. So, that's the next letters after my name. Then we wanted to get the art of chiropractic, how to adjust. And this is about the same time when my twins were born. They were born two months early and I really wanted to know more about adjusting little ones. So, I took a courses in pediatrics. So, I took some classes in pediatrics, how to adjust newborns and pregnant moms. And that's when I got my certification, The Webster Technique. The Webster Technique originally started off as adjusting mom's tailbone and doing some trigger points on mom in order to help a baby that's breached to get back into the birthing position. This way they don't have to have an emergency cesarean. If you get the baby in the right position, the birthing should happen more natural. But we learned that there's no reason to wait until there's a baby born, right? I just told you I took a whole course on wellness and prevention. So, why do we wait until the baby's breached before we start doing this? So, I am a certified Webster practitioner, meaning that I can do the Webster Technique, no problems asked, but I also teach it to students how to do it. Now, I don't offer, so you can't get a Brant Hulsebus certification, but you can get a certification after that. So, I've taught many students how to do the Webster certification so they can go take their test and get their certification. And that's what I had to do. I had to learn the technique and I took an exam to prove I was sufficient in it. Then I earned my certificate in it. And these also account towards my continuing education hours, right? All these classes I'm taking, I've always felt if I have to take continue education hours, I might as well better myself and make myself a better chiropractor. After that, I found a professor I love, his name's Dr. Dan Murphy out of Life West University. He's my favorite professor. Never thought I'd be nerdy enough to have a favorite professor, but I have a favorite person I love to learn from, his name, again, Dan Murphy. He knows the science of chiropractic inside and out and how the adjustments work and how they in influence things. And I just love learning from Dr. Murphy. And he was doing a class on whiplash, so if someone's involved in an auto accident, the best way to take care of them. And I'll be honest with you, I didn't take the class to become a better whiplash doctor. I just took the class because I wanted to learn from Dr. Murphy. So, I was driving to Minnesota. There was 12 courses in Minnesota. Nine of them were Dr. Murphy. So, I only took the nine with Dr. Murphy. I didn't take the ones with the lawyers and how to chase ambulances. I just wanted to be a better chiropractor when it came to an acute injury. How to take care of people with that, and concussion work, too. So, I did a lot of those. So, I also have some credentialing when it comes to auto accidents and taking care of people involved in major accidents. After that, I got more into politics. I did my art, science, and philosophy. Then I got involved in politics and I'm the Illinois delegate of the International Chiropractic Association. That's my version of the AMA. And so, I get really involved in politics and they made me a fellow, meaning that I did so much work, they kind of put me like in their hall of fame of people who do legislative work,'cause of all the work I was able to do, watching bills on laws and allowing patients to have equal access to chiropractic care. This is, again, something I learned from my father and my grandfather before me. They were also very involved in this realm. And I don't know if I was ever elected to this position or was assigned to me because of my legacy, but I've done a lot of good stuff in legislation. You know, a lot of this had, this is, I got the fellowship before COVID, but we did a lot of hard work to make sure chiropractic care was available to you in Illinois during the whole COVID time, because there was big talk of closing us. So the FICA, that's my Fellowship into the International Chiropractic Association, kind of then putting me in their Hall of Fame. But the next one I just got, and that's another fellowship, this time at Palmer College. You see, I learned all this cool stuff and I get all this information in my head and how chiropractic can help people and how we need to get better access to chiropractic through different means. But it won't do any good if we don't have any chiropractors out there. So I partnered up with Rockford 205 and the Health Academy where we host students here in my office. They come in and they shadow and then after they shadow here, then they qualify at the end of the year. We get a big bus and we drive them all out to chiropractic school. Then they get to see what they do at the chiropractic school and how to become chiropractors. And we've got a few students already that's going to chiropractic school now that came in here and shadowed. We even had one who came in here and shadowed and actually works here now. That's Dr. Dace, he did all this bus trip with me many, many years ago. And so, it's been fun to introduce the next generation into the chiropractic. And I work a lot with Palmer admissions, because I think it's important to not only find the next generation, but just expose people to what chiropractors do and what chiropractic is. And we also really lack some things in chiropractic like I've never been prouder to say that chiropractic school now actually has more female students than male students. When when my dad went to school, it was like almost all males and my grandpa went to school, they actually had to hire more females than my dad, but not enough to say it was female dominant. Today, in the chiropractic school, there's more female chiropractors than male chiropractors currently enrolled in Palmer, at least. I can't speak at the other schools, I'm not involved with them. But Palmer College of Chiropractic has more female than male. I think that's really awesome. But now we need to work on diversity. So, I'm hoping that by working with these students and going out talking to people, we can work on some more diversity in chiropractic, because that's important to tell the many people. Many people don't want to go see someone unless they can relate to them. So, more diversity means more people under chiropractic care, more acceptance of what we do, and the whole profession grows and benefits from it. So, I've been working on that. So, I just got my fellowship on that just recently. And I'm very also, talk about myself here for a minute, I'm very proud of the state of Illinois. The Illinois Chiropractic Association just named me Chiropractor of the Year. So you might see I'm a board member of the IPSCA, that's the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association. I serve on their board also while I do this. So yeah, so somebody asked me, what do all these fancy letters on my business card and all this titles and stuff mean? That's kind of what it means. And last but not least, my business card also says I'm the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs. I have been doing that. This is currently my 20th season working with the IceHogs. Beyond that, I also work with Rock Valley College Athletics, the local community college here. They have a big athletic department. We take care of their athletes. I also have worked on basketball teams, soccer teams, baseball teams, you name it. We've worked with every type of athlete. So, I've gotten my feet wet with athletes, too. So we're pretty well-rounded chiropractic clinic, right? Because I have, you know, over the last 20 years, they say you got to keep taking so many hours to keep your license current. And rather than just keep taking the same classes over and over again, we've always tried to take classes to make ourselves better chiropractors. Whether it's adjusting pregnant women, taking care of Olympic athletes, whether it's taking care of somebody involved in a whiplash accident, or whether it's just a mom coming in with her kids and they just want to stay healthy. Or someone's grandpa that wants to mow the yard without having lower back pain. We do all that. So, that's kind of who we are. So usually, somebody asks me a question about chiropractic care. Today, somebody asked me a question about myself and our practice and what we do and what we focus on. So, I just kind of wanted to share that with you. We're kind of a really well-rounded chiropractic clinic. It's a little bit for everybody. Knows a little bit about everything. So there you have it. Well, thanks for listening to my question about what chiropractic certifications are and chiropractic does, and there's many more certifications out there. Come back in 10 years, I'll have some more. We'll talk about those ones. Maybe radiology, maybe something else like that I'll dive into. Who knows what the future brings. But that's kind of what we do. So, if you're looking for a chiropractor, a lot of times looking on their website to see if they have these things, great way to get to know the kind of chiropractor you're going to go see, what their focus is and their passion is. If you have a chiropractor that you look at that doesn't have any of these things, well, maybe you kind of question what they study when they have to study. So, I hope that answered that question about what all the certifications and titles mean. So there you have it. Remember, if you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, you should always ask a chiropractor, not a dentist, not a family doctor, not a physical therapist, but a chiropractor themselves. And if you have any questions for me, go to my website, rockforddc.com. That's R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com, and you'll find us there. Thanks everybody. We'll see you next week.