Welcome to this week's Member Spotlight post! This time we're featuring a sports chiropractor in New South Wales.
Matt hails from the north western suburbs of Sydney and is a graduate of Macquarie University, but now calls the far north coast of New South Wales his home.
Matt has worked with the Cudgen Hornets rugby league club and Coolangatta Blues Australian Rules Football Club with match day strapping, first aid duties and injury management. Matt has also done work with Indoor Netball New South Wales for National Netball tournaments from 2002 to the present. In addition he was the chiropractor/trainer for the New South Wales Men’s O/45’s indoor cricket team that won the national championships in Queensland in 2014. This involves managing a variety of chronic and acute sports injuries and keeping players in good condition and on the court. In the past, he also looked after amateur Rugby League and Rugby Union clubs in Sydney.
Matt is a board member of the Chiropractic Australia (CA), a professional representative body that has formed to provide responsible advocacy and representation for the chiropractic profession in Australia. Matt is also a professional member of the Australian Musculoskeletal Network (AMSN), an organisation dedicated to assisting it’s members provide sound, evidence based treatments for musculoskeletal complaints. Matt enjoys working with a diverse range of patients including regular people with aches and pains, people with chronic diseases looking for assistance managing their pain (CDM/EPC), returned veterans (DVA), weekend warriors and elite athletes.
FTCA: What is chiropractic to you?
MP: Chiropractic to me is a profession of the healing arts. Chiropractic is helping our patients be and feel better - by helping reduce their pain, improve their lifestyle and overall function. It is a profession that continues to grow and evolve as our knowledge and understanding of healing and various techniques. It is not a static profession - it is dynamic.
FTCA: How did you come to chose chiropractic as a career?
MP: I first came to want to be a chiropractor because I had been helped by a chiropractor. A wonderful chiropractor in Parramatta named Peter Walters. He is a Gonstead practitioner. It took a little while for that little seed to germinate, with a deviation in career path in my early twenties. But I got there and I am glad for that.
FTCA: Would you make the same decision knowing what you do now?
MP: That's been a question that I have been asked a thousand times. I think no matter what happened, I was always going to make this decision.
FTCA: How did you first become involved in sports chiropractic?
MP: Sports have always interested me. When I was at university I became a sports trainer for a representative indoor netball team, learning from some very experienced people in the field. I kept that up through my university course, with sports such as indoor netball and rugby union. After graduating, I continued to remain involved with the Indoor Netball and expanded to be involved in rugby league, Australian Rules football and Indoor Cricket.
FTCA:What kind of advice do you have for those who want to do the same?
MP: Study hard. Be excellent at your craft. Always ask questions. Learn every day. Put your name out there. Be prepared to be rejected. Be prepared to be wrong. Be prepared for some pretty bad injuries and giving some bad news to people. Be prepared for a lot of fun, and helping a lot of wonderful people along the way.
FTCA: What’s your favorite sport to care for?
MP: Indoor Netball. It's how I met my wife, I've been around it since childhood, having a sister as a state and national representative, my wife was a state representative. There are some pretty gnarly injuries but also some cool people involved.
FTCA: What are the most common conditions you see on the field that every chiropractor should know how to treat?
MP: Low back pain (acute and chronic) and all of it's subcategories, neck pain, headaches (and all of it's subcategories). These are our bread and butter.
FTCA: What do you think is the most important tool in your treatment box? (SMT, soft tissue, taping, etc)
MP: Having as many tools at my disposal as possible, and then knowing where to use them. Also, having the ability (and humility) to know when something should be left alone (less is more) or referred.
FTCA: What seminar do you recommend the most?
MP: Being an early career practitioner, I have found the wetlabs run by Australian Musculoskeletal Network here in Australia to be particularly useful. Learning anatomy on cadaver specimens when at university was good, but it never helped me in a clinical setting. I think being out for a year or two and then going back to the wetlab has helped me get an appreciation for just what tissues I am effecting, and that muscles/ligaments/tendons etc are not discrete structures - they are continuous with one another and if you intervene with one tissue, it is likely to have an effect on other tissues around it.
FTCA: What do you see as the biggest obstacle to practicing in Australia/NSW?
MP: Political pressure from ineffective representation and self policing. We have experienced some pressure on the profession courtesy of a small, but vocal number of practitioners making claims of treatment effect that cannot be backed by credible evidence (the chestnut of 200-400% immune function boost, YMMV, nerve interference stopping babies from thriving) or making outrageous anti-vaccine statements either on social media or in the clinical setting. This has brought undesired focus on that element of the profession and it reflects poorly on the profession as a whole for failing to self regulate. It also diminishes our ability to represent chiropractors politically as it gives our opponents fodder to discredit us. That is why I have become involved politically with Chiropractic Australia.
FTCA: How do you propose the profession can overcome it?
MP: Self regulate. Professions self regulate and are able to handle internal critique. Those bringing the profession into disrepute need to stop it. They are not being martyrs. They are threatening the livelihoods of thousands of chiropractors in Australia.
FTCA: How do you manage to balance your schedule? Do you?
MP: 3 months ago, I would say I had a pretty poor work/life balance. I was working on every day of the week (not always full days) and missing out on some pretty important family time - daughter's hockey matches, dinner times, Sunday family time. A change in job scenery and prioritising family time has allowed me some proper work/life balance. I have my weekends with my family now, and for that I am grateful.
FTCA: How has being a member of the FTCA been beneficial to you?
MP: I was so grateful to see that there were chiropractors like me that were fed up with the previous echo chamber and dogma. I honestly felt like I was the only one that could see through the looking glass. First of all, it allowed me a place to vent, and a place to read other people venting. That was comforting. Then, after while I learned that there were some good people with good ideas about practice, marketing (done ethically) and there was an opportunity for robust debate of ideas - something I had previously not encountered with chiropractic.