Whether your desire is to work in private practice or in an integrated setting such as a hospital, working with other health care providers is critical in the management of patient health and wellness. No one professional has all the answers and no one type of treatment will work for all people. Therefore, building professional relationships will help you to create a network for referral and to receive insight or feedback on specific patient conditions.  The following 10 tips will outline ways to cultivate these relationships, gain the trust of other providers and secure your place in the community health system.

*Member-Exclusive Content* In this first blog post in a series of three discussing how to be selected for one of the five VA residencies, I’ll be outlining the application process and providing an in-depth guide of how to write a solid personal statement. Subsequent blog posts will cover finding recommendations, completing the necessary application requirements and preparing yourself for an interview.  Some of the information will be from the VA’s residency website while other parts are based on the personal experiences and opinions of current VA residents.

To read, log into MyACA. 

In late October, three of the five chiropractic residents within the Veterans Administration (VA) health care system attended the North American Spine Society’s (NASS) annual symposium in Orlando, Fla.  Rachel Mooers from Los Angeles, Stephanie Halloran from West Haven, Conn., and I spent four days immersing ourselves in spine care from a (mostly) different perspective.

I’ve had more than a handful of family and friends ask me, “What’s it like working for the VA in St Louis?” and my response is always the same—“It’s great!”  I usually then proceed to give them a rundown of what a typical week looks like as my activities vary from day to day and sometimes from month to month.  An average week is broken down into four different segments: outpatient clinic, interdisciplinary pain rehabilitation (IPR) program, scholarly activities, and clinical rotations. The majority of my time is spent in clinic helping veterans manage their pain and develop healthy habits for self-care. However, the time spent outside the clinic has also been beneficial for personal development and education.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) chiropractic residency program reached an historic milestone in 2016 when each of the five sites received accreditation from the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE)—they are the first U.S. chiropractic residency programs to be awarded this distinction. The programs were also successful in many VA performance metrics, including recruitment of high-quality applicants, 100 percent graduation rates, high degree of graduate placement in VA and/or other hospital settings, and high satisfaction across multiple stakeholders. Consequently, in early 2017 VA transitioned the chiropractic residency pilot into a standing residency program. Two residents of the program will share their experiences through a new ACA blog post series.