title: Assessing the attitudes, knowledge and perspectives of medical students to chiropractic.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess second-year medical students' views on chiropractic.
  
  
  METHODS
  A three-step triangulation approach was designed, comprising a 53-item survey, nine key informant interviews and one focus group of 8 subjects. ANOVA was used to assess attitude-response survey totals over grouping variables. Constant comparison method and NVivo was used for thematic analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  112 medical students completed the survey (50% response rate). Subjects reporting no previous chiropractic experience/exposure or interest in learning about chiropractic were significantly more attitude-negative towards chiropractic. Thematically, medical students viewed chiropractic as an increasingly evidence-based complementary therapy for low back/chronic pain, but based views on indirect sources. Within formal curriculum, they wanted to learn about clinical conditions and benefits/risks related to treatment, as greater understanding was needed for future patient referrals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results highlight the importance of exposure to chiropractic within the formal medical curriculum to help foster future collaboration between these two professions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Graduate Studies, Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Jessica J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Di Loreto
authors.forename: Alim
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kara
authors.forename: Kavan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Alicia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mattia
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Soave
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Weyman
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kopansky-Giles
keywords: attitudes; interprofessional; medical; students; survey