Factors Influencing Chiropractors Who Choose not to Join Professional Associations
Abstract Background Professional associations are perceived to promote their professions and support their members. They can provide assistance with complaints, negotiate favourable professional indemnity insurance rates, provide access to research libraries and databases, and organise continuing professional development events. Despite these apparent advantages, about 1 in 3 Australian chiropractors choose not to belong to either of the two professional associations. Our study had three objectives: 1) to explore the views of non-member chiropractors about professional associations in general; and 2) seek to understand the motivations of non-member Australian chiropractors about not joining a professional association; and 3) to discover their reasons that might lead them to join a professional association. Methods This was a qualitative descriptive study utilising in-depth semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions for thematic analysis conducted from January to March 2020. It was estimated that between 6 -15 participants in total would be required to achieve saturation of data, that is, the point where no new themes were being articulated. Participants had to be registered chiropractors who had not been members of a professional association (PA) for the last five years. Recruitment was through a Facebook ad and snowball sampling. Interviews were transcribed and imported into NVivo qualitative analysis software, allowing identification of key concepts surrounding non-membership of chiropractic professional associations. Results Five themes were identified from the data. They were: “Not worth the money”, “Tarnished image of the profession”, “Going it alone / what’s in it for me”, “Lack of visibility”, and “Two warring factions”. The most commonly voiced suggestions for improvement included providing continuing professional development/lectures, frequent email updates about events affecting practice/business, improve the image of the profession through the media, and act as a regulator to the profession. Conclusions Non-members are looking for PAs to enhance the respectability of the profession in a manner that ultimately results in increased patient volume and the provision of readily accessible day-to-day resources and information. These results can inform the construction of a survey for the broader chiropractic non-membership community to confirm and expand upon these findings and improve PAs.