IMU Chiropractic Networking Day: An Opportunity for Alumni and Students to Network

On 8 October 2022, the Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine together with Alumni Relations Office organised the IMU Chiropractic Networking Day. In this event, the existing batch of chiropractic students had the opportunity to be exposed to the different clinics and practices run by IMU alumni throughout Malaysia. With great interest, I took the opportunity to become a student helper after initially signing up as a participant. On that day, my role was to assist with the registrations of the participants and participating clinics, distributing goodie bags, and ushering participants to the respective areas.

Registration for the event began around 9am, with a good turnout of participants from each semester. The clinics also started setting up their booths as the event got underway.

The list of participating clinics are as follows:
JAYA Chiropractic Clinic
My Spine Network Family Chiropractic
WELO Chiropractic
Inspired Chiropractic Spine Specialist
Tulang Suria Chiropractic Center
ASAP Spine and Health
Spinalive Chiropractic
Active Spine Care Chiropractic

The IMU Chiropractic Networking Day began with a Professional Development Forum, in which each speaker gave a brief introduction on their centres, their areas of expertise, and any valuable advice they have for the general audience pertaining to the field of Chiropractic and how to run a successful practice.

The Forum began with a passionate and informative speech by Maegan (second from left in the photo below) from JAYA Chiropractic in Sarawak. She stressed the importance of having more chiropractors in Sarawak, as they are severely understaffed, having only five chiropractors available for the entire state. They take a particular interest in sports, with their involvement in the 6th CMS Borneo Junior Squash Open 2022, providing services such as chiropractic adjustment, physiotherapy rehabilitation, sports injury management, kinesiotaping, and many others.

Next on the agenda was My Spine Network Family Chiropractic. Nur Fazlina Mohamad Razif (second from right in the photo on the left) graduated from IMU, Malaysia as the first female Muslim chiropractor and mainly focuses on providing healthcare to families, pregnant women and children. She shared on her own experiences working as a chiropractor in her early years before opening up her own clinic. Chiropractors are faced with the option to open a clinic right away after they graduated, or to work in other chiropractic clinics to gain experience before starting on a sole venture. Her advice is to gain experience from working in other established chiropractic clinics before opening up a clinic, based on her own personal experiences.

The next clinic was WELO Chiropractic, run by Loh Wei Chee, dedicated to the health and well-being of her patients. She gave a motivating speech to encourage us as students, to always believe in yourself and in your treatment to heal the patient. She emphasised for us to have confidence in our own abilities and to never give up, sharing her own motivational story in the process.

Inspired Chiropractic Spine Specialist, was owned by Christine Yap Lee Sze to inspire more people on the benefits of Chiropractic through her successful testimonials. They specialise in pregnancy and children care, with extensive experience working with families, new-borns, and children, as Christine is passionate in working with children and families on preventive care. One of the cases she shared that really caught my attention was an obstetric of brachial plexopathy of a new-born, in which the baby had a traumatic birth and injured the nerves of the right arm, showing progression in her recovery over five years of chiropractic care.

Up next was Tulang Suria, a chiropractic centre based in Kedah. Intan Nur Najihah binti Mohd Padzri shared on the difficulties on starting up a business there due to the location and the lack of public exposure to chiropractic. She also shared on how she was serving the community by introducing lower prices in order to accommodate for the population there, as well as providing comprehensive treatment for all her patients.

ASAP Chiropractic Clinic was also present as the only Gonstead-based clinic present during this Forum, with Kyle Lim giving general advices for us as students during our degree. The speech was then followed by Yip Tuck Hoong, representing Spinalive.

Lastly, Active Spine Care, led by Yang I-Yu, the current president of the Alumni Chiropractic Chapter gave a short speech and opened the floor for a Q&A session in which the audience interacted with and asked questions regarding Chiropractic to all the presenters during the Forum.

After the Q&A session was completed, students were able to walk around, explore, and network with the various chiropractors and to gain exposure to different clinics at their exhibition booths.

All in all, it was my first time participating in such events, and undoubtably, it was a great experience and opportunity for me to explore and connect with the chiropractors throughout Malaysia. Listening to their journey, from graduation and eventually opening up their own clinics, really earned my respect. It got me thinking of my future career path.

Especially being a Semester 7 student now and graduating in less than one year, yet I am still unsure of what my future plan is like. This event came just at the right time for us to take in advices from those with a wealth of experiences and skills, opening new doors of opportunity that might be out of reach otherwise.

Written by Lee Kar Yee from CH219 cohort.