Professionalism and Professional Standards for Chiropractors for Chiropractors facing a Chiropractic Board investigation, complaint or allegation

The events in order; the principle of the Code or the standard you fell short of, named by you before the Board names it; the effect on the patient in their terms; what you have done since, with dates and someone else’s confirmation; and what would be different next time — without the philosophy of care as a reason and without the patient blamed for not committing. The course sets weak and strong responses to the same events side by side.

It is one dated item. The rest is targeted CPD, a mentor’s or peer’s written reports, an audit of records, consent, plans or claims repeated after an interval, the website reviewed against the Advertising Standards, and reflective writing that cites the Code. No provider is accredited by the Chiropractic Board and no course decides a matter, though the Commissioner has recommended consent and documentation courses and the Tribunal ethics training; check the wording of any direction with your indemnity insurer, professional association or lawyer.

Yes — before anything goes to the Board, a review panel, a Professional Conduct Committee, the Tribunal, ACC or your employer. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no course determines the outcome of a matter.

At the patient’s understanding and the patient’s interest. The Code’s first principle is care — the patient’s best interests first — and it says financial interests must not influence clinical decisions. The Board reads for whether the plan was sized to the patient rather than the practice, whether the patient understood what they were paying for and could stop, and whether fear was used. The course gives care plans and prepayment a section of their own.

Yes. The Board’s Advertising Standards ban testimonials, require every claim to be backed by evidence you can produce, and bar fear, fees and treatment at public checks; complaints about aggressive marketing reached the Board in its last reported year. A remediation portfolio for an advertising matter includes the website reviewed against the Standards before the Committee asks, not after.

It will read it as integrity before it reads it as record keeping. Notes written to support a claim, or a claim made for care the notes do not show, are a question of honesty, and the Tribunal has cancelled registrations over ACC claims for care that was not given. The course covers records and billing together because the Board reads them together.

The July 2026 standard covers patients, former patients, their close contacts and colleagues. It bars sexual relationships with current patients outright, sets out the factors for a former patient rather than a time limit, allows whānau to be treated where culturally appropriate but not on ACC, limits gifts to the token, places the responsibility solely on the chiropractor, and requires you to report a colleague’s breach. The course is written to it.

Yes. The Code takes Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the foundation for relationships in Aotearoa and requires culturally safe care, and the Board’s standards of cultural competence apply — how the head and the body are approached, who is in the room, and how a Māori patient’s reluctance to be touched is read. A complaint about tikanga ignored or whānau kept out of a plan is a professionalism complaint.

The Ethics course is about reasoning: consent to a cervical adjustment, the plan and the patient’s interest, the claim and the evidence, candour, confidentiality. This course is about conduct: how care is sold, boundaries as behaviour, honesty in records and advertising, communication, records and imaging, and the response a professionalism matter calls for.

The course is 2 CPD hours, self-paced, with twelve months’ access from purchase. The certificate is issued on completion, dated, with the course title and the CPD hours, for your recertification, a competence programme or a response.