 And we're live again. This is Exploring Chiropractic, the podcast for chiropractic and pre-chiropractic students. I'm Nathan Cash and the host, and joining me today, all the way from Barcelona, Spain, I'm excited to introduce Max Greger. How are you doing, Max? I'm doing pretty good. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you so much for getting in touch and wanting to share about your school, Barcelona College of Chiropractic. Thank you for letting me do this as well. It looks like it'll be great. I'm really excited. I pulled out my old Barcelona t-shirt. Is the team in good standing? Yeah, it was a bit better one or two years ago, but it's still doing good, so it's fine. I don't want to have to take it off in the middle if you're angry at the team or anything. I'm here in Portland, and we're in the middle of the NBA playoffs, and the Portland Trailblazers have been doing really well this season, and now they're in, I think, the semifinals of playoffs, and they're just losing every game by 20 points. So I think a lot of people are kind of upset. You're in Barcelona, and I didn't know for the longest time that there was a school in Barcelona, and probably for good reason. It's fairly new. Yeah, well, it's five years old right now, so we actually haven't had a graduating class. It's quite exciting right now because our first graduating class is about to graduate in the next month, so that'll be definitely an interesting time for the school and as well for chiropractic in Spain, because chiropractic in Spain is also fairly new, so it'll be interesting. It's a time of huge growth, and it's very interesting for chiropractic. The school started in 2009, and it was kind of a collaboration from a couple of other universities. How did that work? Well, I think it originally started, and the story that I've heard is it started through just basically 15 chiropractors that sat down together and decided that there needed to be more schools in Europe, because there's just a shortage of chiropractors over here in general. I mean, if we look at Spain right now, there's around 250 chiropractors for a population of close to 50 million, so there's definitely a need over here for chiropractors, and that's what I think they're trying to achieve, as well as bringing in some more of the different types of chiropractic, because it's quite a philosophically-based school as well. Okay, that's interesting to hear. I always like to just get a feel kind of on that spectrum if it's more philosophy or science-based. I did notice on the webpage some photos, and they had one that said something about chiropractic, and it emphasized the tick, and that usually is an indication that they focus a little more on the philosophy. Well, yeah, I would say they focus pretty heavily on all three, the art, the science, and the philosophy. I don't think they tend to polarize the difference between philosophy and science, because you can't really have one without the other in a certain way, so I think they encourage you to sort of study the philosophy of science and the science of philosophy in a different kind of way. So it's quite interesting, and this school is also very strong on the arts. It's something that they emphasize from the first year you start palpating. I don't know how it works in your school, but other schools in America, but you get two and a half years of clinic time, which I think is above the normal amount. Yeah, it seems that it is. And I notice on the webpage, they mentioned a few times that in the early years, there's a lot of observation that the students are observing chiropractors treating patients. Is that how it works? Yeah, that's correct. When I was in my first year, I was in the clinic, and I observed sort of like your mentor when he works in the clinic, and then you have to write down what you see, how you think he could improve, what you could do better. I did learn quite a lot like that, actually, because I was observing their interactions, and I saw some good things and some bad things. It helped me out. And then in the second year, you do it again, and you do different things. It's a form of personal development that prepares you for the clinic. That's pretty interesting. You're taking chart notes and kind of doing your own history as the doctor is doing it as well? Yeah. Well, you're just standing in the corner, and you have to wear the clean uniform, and you're just standing there and just observing away. Of course, you have to get practice member consent, but yeah. That's pretty awesome that you start that so early. I think in general, that's kind of halfway through the program in the States. Definitely, you can chat or you can go into the clinic earlier, but to be a little more active like that, that's neat that you do it so early. The school is also bilingual, and being in Spain, you're going to be speaking Spanish, but I get the feeling that there's a lot of international students. Of course, you weren't born in Spain, I don't think. No, yeah. Well, I was born in England, and then I moved to Spain when I was 12, and I studied in middle school and high school here. So fortunately, I was fluent in Spanish before I came here, and I actually lived in Russia for a while for a year, and then I lived in America as well for four years. I did my undergraduate at Mississippi State. I used to play a lot of tennis, so I did a scholarship thing over there, and I played for the school, and then I came back here. I was going to actually study chiropractic in the States, and then I came back here for the summer to visit my family, and I ended up staying here instead. Was it your experience in tennis that led you into chiropractic? Yes, it was actually. I used to travel. I used to be on the tour, so I was travelling around, and as part of the team, we had to go and see the chiropractor and make sure it was more about prevention with the chiropractor. He was expected to keep us healthy so that we could keep training to our utmost performance. So it was probably a slightly different way that I got into it, but it was also a very nice way for me to get into it as well, because I could see from early on stage that chiropractic can do a lot more than just treat the symptoms. It can actually increase your wellness as well, so that was a great point. Definitely was what really interested me in chiropractic as well, is getting beyond getting out of pain, but actually getting to where you're functioning better, you're moving better, you're performing in sports at a higher level. Absolutely. That's one of the main things that I like about it too, is that the difference to the medical approach, which is probably slightly more pathogenic, the chiropractic, we have this huge, it can be, but you can also have this huge salutogenic approach as well, which just asks a whole range of different questions, like what is the origin of health, and it attempts to advance further and further to the health spectrum until you don't really feel the symptoms and the pain that you get when you're generally holistically more unhealthy. How does it work being in bilingual school then? Are they taught in Spanish or English or both? Well, the first year what they do is they put translators in the back of the room, so the translators have their own little box. Yeah, it's pretty funny actually. There's an awesome video on the webpage I was watching this morning. I actually have a sound booth in the back with a professional microphone. Do they just have headphones? Yeah, you plug your headphone in. This box is noise-isolating. I don't know how they survive in there. There's no oxygen in there. I think somebody opened up the door and farted in the first year. Yeah, basically you can plug it in, you tune into your channel and you listen to them translating life. That's incredible. That gives you a year to learn Spanish. On the website, under their purpose and vision, they have a list of their goals for the students. One of them is bilingual to support students linguistically so that they become proficient in the school's two official languages before graduating. Whether you originally speak Spanish or English, by the end you're going to be bilingual. Yeah, I would agree with that. Once you get into the clinic, if you're English, you better be speaking Spanish or else you're not going to communicate to all of your patients. I didn't imagine so. All of your patients are local, huh? Yeah, and if you're Spanish, then most of the textbooks are in English, so you have to put in the effort for the language. I think that's a great thing because you do graduate bilingual at the end of the day. What's the student body like? Obviously you're from England and living all around. I noticed on the video there is a student from Finland and a student from the US. And by the way, just go to the... it's b-c-chiropractic.es so it's not .com, that's in the US. It's .es for Spain. b-c-chiropractic.es and go to the homepage and it'll play a video about the school. It's really a well-done video about five minutes long. But I noticed a student from Finland, a student from the US, of course, from Spain. What's the student body like? It's a complete mix, actually. It's hugely diverse. I think the thing is that because chiropractic is slightly undeveloped in Spain right now, there's very few students here that are actually Spanish. If there's a lot from... I mean, my roommates here, one was from Sweden, the other one was Italy, the other one's England, and then in my class we've got a huge mix. It's all over Europe, particularly Scandinavian. There's quite a lot of Finnish. There's a couple from Norway now, Sweden, Estonia, England, of course. There's a load from Italy as well because there's no chiropractic school in Italy and there's quite a few American chiropractors that have moved over there because I guess they like Italy and they keep referring people. But yeah, all over, absolutely all over Europe. And there's also quite a few from America. I think three or four students from America have come. What do you think it is that draws these international students to Barcelona rather than some of the other schools in Europe? I believe there's another school in... Is it Madrid? And then there's a couple in the UK. Why Barcelona? Well, I think, firstly, Barcelona is Barcelona. I mean, it's a great city. I mean, if you come to visit, you'll really like it. You've got the mountains two, three hours away. You can go skiing. You can go for the weekend ski in the winter and in summer, you've got the Mediterranean right next door. So you can surf. I mean, it really is. I mean, it's constantly voted one of the top 10 to our cities in the world. So it's got just about everything. So that's obviously an attractive fact. And then you've got also the added bonus that it's bilingual so that the English student coming down here, I think you would probably be more interested in choosing Barcelona right now because they do offer the English component as well as the Spanish. So if you're writing your exam, you can choose to write in English or in Spanish. And the questions are placed in both languages. Which is obviously a benefit for people from other parts of Europe if they don't speak Spanish. I mean, English is so widely spoken. That's a great option for most people. But that's a great point. It is Barcelona. I mean, why would you not? My mom was just in Spain. She teaches high school Spanish and she's taken students on trips traveling to Europe. And this is probably her 15th time or something going to Spain. So it's a beautiful city and it's so awesome to see photos of universities in the back. Yeah. The school, again, was established kind of a coordination between a couple of other universities in the area. Do you have your own campus and your own buildings? Yeah. Well, the campus is, it's really in the center. So you're in the middle of Barcelona. It's in Pompeo Fauda. So we use Pompeo Fauda's facilities in the university, which means that we're in with those other students but we have our own floor, our own level per se. And then we have their library, which is often where the students go to study, which is down on the beach, which is nice, but in the summer you see everybody going past onto the beach with volleyball and their studying. Come on. Do you have the clinic, which is up in the mountains? Well, not the mountains, but just slightly above Barcelona. It's still in Barcelona, but it's just a different area. I don't know my geography too well. Are you near the Pyrenees? Which mountain range is this? Oh, wait. The Pyrenees is where you could go skiing in the winter, yeah. But there's just little hills around Barcelona as well with Fabulous. I only know about the Pyrenees because I'm a runner and a fan of Kylian Jorné. He traversed the Pyrenees. Yeah, I've had it. It was a long distance. Incredible. So you used some other facilities and I was quite surprised at a new university practic school. Expecting you're putting things together and not be fully developed. But again, the photos and the video online show that the school is really well put together. It just looks to all the classrooms. You've got all the tables, the equipment, everything that you would expect. So how long is the program? Well, the program is five years and you get a Master's of Chiropractic at the end of it awarded from the Pompil Fabulous University. So five years. So a little bit different from the states. It's a little bit seems to norm for international down in Australia it's five years and you get the Master's. Does that include the undergraduate or do you have to have prerequisites going into the five-year program? No, there are students that can come straight out of high school and go into the curriculum. There are certain prerequisites that you may need. You can have them. You can take this prerequisite course right before you start the five years which is a few months just a couple of months just to get you updated on the sciences particularly. What's the legal state of chiropractic right now in Spain? Well, in Spain you have I'm not sure if this is like this in English but you have legal and illegal. In Spain they've put in in Spanish they've put in another word so you've got legal, illegal and illegal. Which I It's not against the law but there's no laws governing it? Basically. Basically means that they're sort of turning a blind eye to it right now and just pretending I am. It sounds very similar to what's going on in Brazil right now so there's no licensure. You can practice without a license but it sounds like there's kind of a bit of a gray zone where you might get in trouble if you're doing things that are out of your scope of practice. Is there an established scope of practice? Is there a chiropractic organization in Spain that guides you? There's an organization there's the AEQ Spanish Association here but there's no defined scope of practice as of yet in Spain so it can be a little bit disturbing in a certain sense because technically anybody can practice chiropractic and you can't stop them. If I wanted to open up a chiropractic clinic I could technically. So that's why Spain is pushing to get more regulation and laws but once again it's something that is very new here and it is something that the public is very interested in so I think that will come as more and more people and chiropractors grow in the region. There's an article that I got that I believe had to do with the World Congress for Chiropractic Students which we'll talk about in a moment but it's chiropractic reivindica my Spanish is really rusty I always want to pronounce it in Portuguese which I think is chiropractic reivindicated or I've lost the translation here I had to translate it reclaimed and it's a discussion of the president of the Spanish Chiropractic Association the AEQ talking about the need for regulation that it protects the chiropractor as well as the patients. Is regulation a positive thing or is there benefit to having that freedom to practice however you want? There's definitely a benefit to having the freedom well this is again my opinion but for example I know it can make it a lot easier just to come over here and get set up and started but then of course there's a flip side to the coin and that means that anybody can do that and I do know a couple of people who practice in this area who give adjustments and they're not chiropractors and they didn't do the course and they don't and at the end of the day they're putting the patients and their practice members at harm's risk there's definitely the downside as well Yeah We also are involved in the WCCS which we've mentioned on the show in previous episodes and recently there's the annual meeting in Malaga, Spain How did that go? That was an experience and a half Well I originally became member of the World Chiropractic Congress of Students in I think it was 2012 in Australia a couple of years ago so we flew over to Australia we spent the week there talking about chiropractic it was just a mind blowing experience because you're with all these passionate chiropractic students that really get what chiropractic is about and really want the best for it so it really changed my view on chiropractic and one of the things that happened in Australia was that we put in a bid to host to host the Congress this year in Malaga and that was a couple of years ago then in between that we also went to Durban and went to the WFC and also the chiropractic congress was there and then this year we finally hosted it in Malaga and it was a big event it was a great turnout we had 138 students at the end from all around the world about 22 or more different schools as well it was a fantastic event it's a great way to if any new students are wanting to get more involved in chiropractic and see the different ideas and that people have in the different places that people come from that's one of the best things you can do without a doubt and that's exactly what I'm trying to do I hadn't known about the WCCS before so it's great to hear that students from all the schools are getting together and talking about what they share in common just glancing at the WCCS page it looks about maybe half of the schools in the US are members and you have to apply to get your school to be a member of the organization is that correct? that's right when you apply the US you apply you play a membership fee a thousand a year for the schools and then from there then you have to raise the money to get your students to the annual congresses so that's yeah what is that fundraising like actually this week I'm headed to Miami for a conference I got a scholarship for the the attendance fee but to fly there it's so expensive and you're talking about going to Durban, going to Australia how do you raise these funds well it's actually much easier than you think because what you've got to remember is that carapaxes are hugely invested in giving back to their profession as far as I can see so they really want the best for the profession and they realize that the younger generations that are coming up and they're motivated to do these things then they really want to back you so as far as I can see it's not been that difficult for us for example Australia since 5 people to Australia which is quite a chunk of money if you consider that you have to pay the inscription fee as well but we managed to raise about $9,000 $10,000 that year a lot of it was just through speeches we did some speeches to local carpractors in conventions it worked out well did a couple of fundraising barbecues sounds like you're really reaching out and coming up with great ideas I hadn't thought of going to carpractors directly I'm using an online crowdsourcing campaign which is very common from the other students here in the states that go to adjusting seminars and SACA which is the American Car Practice Association but that's great that carpractors are willing to contribute back and help the students progress yeah, there it is it looks like the WCCS has already planned their annual meeting for next year and that's going to be in the states yeah that's going to be a great conference obviously it's in life university the guy hosting it is Mike Collaback he's a good friend of mine he's going to be on the show a couple of months back something came up for him and I'm trying to remember was it Mike or yeah I think Mike had to cancel at the last minute so we had Dan Atkin on from life he's involved in WCCS as well excellent yeah, well that's the thing last summer I was in the US I went over there I really wanted to do some of the seminars that you guys have over there and I went to Atlanta and I stayed with Mike for a good few days and he showed me around the university so that was a good experience what did you think of life university it sounds like a gorgeous campus it's a great campus you can't compare much to campus it's got that space it's out in the country so they can really play around with things over there and here is you can't do that as much because you're in the center of the city so if students want to attend WCCS coming up in Atlanta in 2015 where do they start if their school is not a member so the first thing they need to do is they need to they need to contact the WCCS I think the best way for them to do that is to contact one of the board members which is if you go on to the web you can see that on the website you'll see board members and you'll see the contacts you've got the emails there and then from there we'll go ahead and we'll send you different information and files and documents and we'll get that out to you often what we do as well with new schools is that we set up a mentoring committee so we get one school to help out the other school and they'll show them how they've done it and the details about right now we're trying to do that with the Swiss school that's awesome I contacted I don't remember who it was now it looks like you're one of the board members vice president and I got the information that there's a presentation that you have to do at one of the annual meetings that the school is officially accepted what does that entail? yeah well that's just I think that's more when you go to the congress you need to be voted in as well so this presentation is to give a little bit background from the school what the program is what you study, what it entails a little bit about the clinic and that's just for the other members of the congress to get a little bit of an idea about the school if they can decide whether they would like to be a part of this or not awesome well thanks for sharing more about the WCCS it sounds like a great group of people to be involved with and I'm glad they're coming a little closer next year maybe they'll join in why don't you join for western like I said I tried to get that rolling the student bodies are notoriously hard to get things but I'm looking into it, I'm working on it we need to get in touch with the ASB president at my school let's begin to wrap it up this has been really cool chatting with you I ask everyone to be pretty honest tell me if there's one thing you could change about Barcelona College of Chiropractic what would that be? there's one thing I could change I'd say the organization right now because it's still a young school and we've got timetables flying around things happen fully set in right now so there is a schedule but things are still mobile mobile so that's what I would change still getting established yeah alright let's move on to our tick pics you've got a great pic to share with the students something looking towards the future yeah so I guess my tick pic is the IAF report which is the 2025 report I'm not sure if you've got it over there yeah I'll pull it up right now on the screen if you're watching the video so this is a an institute for alternative futures at the future what the future holds for chiropractic what did you gain from this well it's just this is a report done by the futurists and they the same futurists that have done many of the Fortune 500 companies and they really they've dedicated a lot of time to this and they've predicted the different scenarios and paths that chiropractic can take as a profession what we need to be able to do and where we should go basically and it's a very interesting read as much for students as for chiropractors as for prospective students who are thinking about coming into the profession and it addresses something that's mentioned a lot is this infighting within chiropractic the philosophy versus the science and it looks like they come up with three scenarios or four scenarios for the future where they kind of move along that spectrum that continuum of okay what's it going to look like if we go the vitalistic route and we kind of shun the medical the medical paradigm or what would it be like if we try to to join up with the medical paradigm and progress chiropractic in that way and then a couple of options in between and it's quite a long document it's about 80 or so pages with references and there's a lot of references I myself have not read through this but I've downloaded it and kind of glanced so really interesting to look forward to what chiropractic might be like in 2025 what is your feeling how is chiropractic going to progress um I mean it's a tough call if I knew that I'd be but in this report I definitely hope it wouldn't be scenario one or two which is looks a little bit more dismal but um I would really like for me personally I think I value the whole vitalistic vitalistic aspect that chiropractic can bring to the healthcare so for me I would I hope scenario four and I think scenario three and four would be the most likely from what I remember reading in that report awesome well speaking of kind of the science versus philosophy my tick pick uh maybe not directly related to that idea but is a new TV show fairly new that's come out and I'm not sure if you've heard of this it's called Cosmos and back in the 70's this was a TV show that kind of popularized science on a public broadcasting station but now it's come out and it's on cable channels it's on prime time here in the states and it's being broadcast across the world via national geographic channel so I think it's in 100 something countries in 40 different languages is hosted by an astrophysicist named Neil deGrasse Tyson and the reason I'm picking this is because Neil deGrasse Tyson met the original host of Cosmos Carl Sagan who's a well known scientist and Neil deGrasse Tyson was looking to go into a field for astrophysicists trying to choose his school whether it was Cornell or Harvard or he was a very intelligent high school student and Carl Sagan invited him to the campus to decide whether that school was the right one for him and in the first episode of Cosmos Neil deGrasse Tyson tells this story and it really struck a chord with me because it's what I'm trying to get across with exploring chiropractic is that there isn't a school the best chiropractic school out there but that it's what school is right for each student and I recently got a message from a previous guest on the show who transferred from University of Western States to Life West and she mentioned to me you know what there really isn't a great school there are things that I didn't like about Western States and now I'm at Life West and there's things that I'm not really excited about here although there's things that I love about both so I think that story of Neil having this popular man this incredible scientist and this TV show host later on bring him to the school and say hey this is what we do decide whether it's right for you was really empowering to him and he actually didn't choose Cornell he didn't choose the school that Carl Sagan was taking him to and visiting he chose Harvard for his undergraduate so really it's all about what's the best school for you and I think you did a great job sharing Barcelona on this episode and I'm so glad that you contacted me and shared this well thank you I really appreciate what you're doing here as well with this transparency on the school thing it seems really a useful project yeah I really hope so and for those listening to the podcast afterwards I am kind of branching out because there's so many things in chiropractic that I'm excited about that don't directly relate to the schools and so I started interviewing chiropractors and even a medical doctor and talking with students about stuff other than their school so those are going to be some special episodes coming out in the feed later on in fact a couple of them may have come out before this episode does I'm trying to organize the order of these things but Max Greger thank you so much thank you for talking in Barcelona thank you for talking about WCCS and sharing everything about chiropractic throughout the world thank you very much I think we're going to just keep this recording for a bit if there's anything else you want to talk about I can always edit it out later it's fine what about your school what about my school we're going to talk about my school soon you know I didn't want to start with western states just because it's my school I want to avoid any narcissism and so I started with Logan and then life west and then I was going to do western states but that's when other students started contacting me and saying hey I want to talk about you know life in Georgia I want to talk about schools in Australia and it's been so awesome to hear from students all across the world yeah absolutely I think I remember too that it was quite a few students told me to get in contact with you as well about that so oh is that right now are you it's word of mouth I guess it's slowly starting to go out there I think I got lucky because the host of Spinal Column Radio kind of caught my show in the first episode are you familiar with Spinal Column Radio no I'm not okay that's interesting you're probably the first person that I've had on the show that isn't it's a podcast oh Sparticle okay yes Spinal Column Radio SCR which is there's a chiropractor up in Seattle Washington area and he's had a podcast for years and years about philosophy based chiropractic he stopped producing episodes now but but there's 170 something episodes that you can go and I think you'd really enjoy it Dr. Thomas Lamar and I think I owe a lot to him I think half of the people I've talked to have been because of him so yeah so so the school sounds so interesting Barcelona I'd love to be able to get out there sometime yeah I mean you should come over take a visit why not what's the student body like I mean how many students are there so there's about 120 to 130 students right now each year seems to be progressively bigger so in my year we're 27 students the whole year which is great because we have a small class and then there's 27 students and that will get halved when you come into practical class so if you're 27 students you'll be 12 maybe like 13 students and 13 students when it comes to practical class and there's often two teachers so you can often be you know six people to a teacher so it's very individualized when you learn the techniques and stuff as well so that's a great class for the school I think yeah I think that's a great thing I chose to start the program during the winter during January and there's at my school there's two starts September and January and the only difference is the size of the class and I think there's a lot of benefit to having that smaller class size I think my class right now is about 45 students okay because you do you do the quarter system we do the quarters yeah we do the semesters here so oh you're in semesters okay one semester and then we're just coming up to finals right now so once we do these exams over the next weeks we're finished with those and then we go two and nearly three months holiday three months wow yeah almost it's a good chunk so you can use that time to go learn more about CAB I think or do what at seminars or whatever you want to do what do you have planned for this coming up break I got I guess from exams you get all sorts of crazy ideas about after being chained to your desk for certain while you start to have images of roaming to different places but I definitely want to get do some seminars I'd like to try some I know there's a several coming up in Europe a couple of concert ones and yeah so I'll do that and see if I can travel a bit around Europe so it's very easy to do as well so hopefully the answer to this actually benefits of Europe is being able to hit so many countries absolutely I was planning on taking a bike and just cycling through yeah that would be an interesting time but that's another thing about the school that I forgot to mention is that the year you do quite a few different techniques so the second year you learn to diversify the third year you learn Gonsted the fourth year you learn SOT and Thompson and the fifth year you do I think it's upper cervical so the first when is the first adjusting class second year first year is just palpation just hands on feeling touching people basically it's always fun to practice your communication with patients and we're always joking and adjusting in palpation labs you don't want to say okay I'm coming in okay I'm going to touch you now no you can't say that you can't really say palpate because most patients don't know what that means yeah it's true you forget what do you say in Spanish what are the words palpate okay is that a more common term in Spanish than palpate in English I guess so yeah palpate in English is not that common I mean medical doctors kind of use it but I think the general public has no idea what it means yeah so I think it's a little bit more common in Spain I guess you'd use tocar if not but again it's one of those things you have to be careful with your words in clinics and it's always awkward because you're practicing with other students who just did it you know said the same thing to you 40 seconds ago and so you're explaining a procedure and they're just like yeah I know I know but you've got to practice that do you guys find ways to get around that awkwardness absolutely not it's just part of it isn't it I don't know about you guys as well but in our first year we all had to be practically in shorts or underwear or you know whatever it is so you as well so that was the first bit of awkwardness you have as a class but I guess you get used to it after a while yeah just wearing the gowns yeah oh that's fun alright well I think we'll end this recording I'm not sure what else to talk about so thanks people for watching live