• Dunn AS

• Internship, Nonmedical
• Military Personnel
• Open Access Document
• United States. Dept. of Defense

Objective: Department of Defense (DoD) chiropractic internships first began in July of 2001. At the time of this study, 30 New York Chiropractic College student interns had completed part of their clinical education within chiropractic clinics at either the National Naval Medical Center or Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the careers of DoD chiropractic internship participants with comparable non-participants in terms of demographics, professional activities, income and satisfaction.

Methods: Survey research was employed to gather data from DoD chiropractic internship participants and comparable non-participants. Statistical analysis was carried out to determine significant differences with a nominal significance level set as 0.05.

Results: There were no statistically significant differences in demographics, professional activities, income or career satisfaction between the 21 DoD chiropractic internship participants (70% response rate) and 35 internship non-participants (35% response rate).

Conclusions: This study utilized practice parameters as a form of feedback for a comparative analysis of DoD chiropractic internship participants and non-participants and found no significant differences between these groups. Limitations of the study may have influenced the results. Opportunities for chiropractic students to train within these settings remains limited and should be further explored, as should additional research into this component of chiropractic clinical education.

This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. Click on the above link for free full text. PubMed Record