Joy Kong, MDRegenerative Medicine Physician, Educator, and Entrepreneur

Chiropractic School vs Medical School: What's the Difference? 😲

25 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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0:42

Short transcript excerpt from a YouTube video (by Joy Kong, MD) comparing chiropractic school to medical school. The speaker claims chiropractic students took every basic science class that Johns Hopkins graduates did, that the chiropractic program had ~500 more total program hours than Johns Hopkins graduates, and that the chiropractic program is WASC-accredited. The speaker notes pharmacology is covered but less in-depth (since chiropractors don’t prescribe), while chiropractic training goes substantially further in imaging/interpretation, spinal anatomy, and spinal biomechanics.

Chiropractic school. How does that compare to a medical school?
What I'll do is compare it to what I know from the classes that I took at my time and comparing it to John Hopkins. We took every single basic science class that the graduates from John Hopkins did. Our total program hours is actually 500 hours more than the graduates from John Hopkins and it's WASC accredited, the accrediting body for all upper division medical schools.
So all the basic sciences?
Yeah, we took every basic science class. They went a little further into. Well they went much further into psychology than we did and then pharmacology I think they took an additional class or two but we still had to take.
You had to take pharmacology as well?
Yeah, because we have to understand interactions and the basics of what it does. But because we're not prescribing, we don't need to go as in depth as they do. But where we exceeded their classes was in imaging and interpretation, spinal anatomy, spinal biomechanics and quite substantially.
Yeah.