Program Director Michael Schneider explaining basic anatomy of the spine
The Pitt Doctor of Chiropractic program is eight terms, or 2 and 2/3 years, which includes two summer terms. This will be the shortest length chiropractic program in the United States, but it meets or exceeds all Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) standards with 4,200 total hours of instruction including over 1,900 hours of clinical instruction.
Q: Will this program successfully prepare students for the boards when it is a lot shorter than other chiropractic programs? Is there not as much material covered?
A: The program is shorter in time, but not in content. We have been able to artfully compress the required material into eight terms instead of 10. For example, in the final semester of clinical experience, you will be working 40 hours/week in a clinical setting, while other chiropractic schools for the last semester have you working 12 to 15 hours/week and nothing else, which is not an efficient use of your time or education.
Our program will meet all requirements for accreditation in terms of hours of instruction and will exceed the hours of clinical instruction. All the necessary content is being covered, but in a more innovative manner. We're using technology, active learning pedagogy and reducing the length of didactic lectures to ensure that students are engaged in all aspects of the program. We've been able to develop a simplified way to do that in eight terms without sacrificing the quality of instruction. Rather, we’re improving it.
We’ve streamlined the material so that everything we teach is relevant to what will be on the boards. We will not have extraneous course material that might be interesting but will not help you pass the boards or even be relevant to chiropractic practice. We’re taking the essentials and making it focused. That’s why it is shorter.
First Year: What to Expect
The first year will include necessary foundational material, such as anatomy, the biomedical sciences, physiology, microbiology and some genetics, but this will not be rote memorization learning. These basic sciences will be taught in a clinically relevant chiropractic context so that they're meaningful for you as a chiropractor. We will also start to develop your manual skills so that you’ll be strengthening both your hands and your mind.
The classroom experiences are structured to prepare you for the clinical experiences. We're not waiting until your last year to have you interact with patients. In the first semester you'll be doing observational rounds, such as at a rehabilitation hospital in Pittsburgh where we can bring you to the hospital to gain exposure to more serious diseases. You can do neurological rounds where you can observe, for example, abnormal neurological reflexes that you'll be learning about in the classroom. You will learn first-hand about some of the rehabilitation that's standard in medicine which then sets you up for experiences in later semesters where you will be more focused on chiropractic related care.
Second Year: What to Expect
In the second year, we’ll move away from foundational knowledge to diagnosis and clinical reasoning: How are you going to put these pieces together in a clinically relevant way to help patients? You'll start learning about different disorders that you will be treating as chiropractors and disorders that maybe you'll be referring to specialists. And more importantly, how would you co-manage these cases? The unique services and programs at the University of Pittsburgh will enable you to learn how to be part of a team of health care professionals in an interprofessional setting.
Being part of the University of Pittsburgh doesn’t mean just having access to strong academic experiences; it means participating in robust clinical experiences to refine your clinical skills so that you start to think like a clinician and become a confident, effective practitioner.
Third Year: What to Expect
In the third year, you will be full-time in a clinical setting. The goal is for you to graduate with knowledge in all aspects of the hub and spoke model shown below. You'll rotate through all those hubs ending with the last year of full-time clinical, chiropractic experience.
The “hub and spoke model” of the Pitt Doctor of Chiropractic program clinically robust education
Over the eight terms of the University of Pittsburgh Doctor of Chiropractic program, you'll be receiving comprehensive and extensive skills training in the use of your hands to excel at spinal manipulation and mobilization. You will go from learning how to do skills, showing us that you know how to do them, then doing them in practice so that by the end of your eight terms you're hitting the ground running, treating patients and feeling confident as a chiropractic professional.
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The Pitt Doctor of Chiropractic application is open now—from August 1, 2024 - February 1, 2025! Classes start in August 2025. Apply now!
Learn more about the Doctor of Chiropractic program by visiting our website or reaching out to our enrollment specialist at enroll@shrs.pitt.edu today!
Continue reading about the Pitt Doctor of Chiropractic program
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Game-Changer: Introducing the University of Pittsburgh Doctor of Chiropractic Program
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The Evidence-Based and Clinically Robust Pitt Doctor of Chiropractic Curriculum