While both practitioners seek to address pain and promote healing in their patients, the jobs do vary.
Do you want to help people not only feel better—heal an injury or relieve chronic pain, for example—but also promote their overall wellness? Both chiropractors and physical therapists work to address immediate physical pain and look at the body holistically.
Each job, however, follows a different path toward that goal. Which job interests you?
Physical therapy emphasizes functional health. A practitioner may focus on restoring movement needed to work, such as reaching or even sitting, for example, or they may help a person get back to enjoying a sport or playing with grandchildren after an injury.
Chiropractic restores overall health and helps people regain movement by realigning the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine.
Physical therapy focuses on restoring functional health, while chiropractic focuses on restoring overall health.
Roles and Responsibilities
There is plenty of crossover between physical therapy and chiropractic, says Andrea Mursu, DC, a chiropractor in Chicago. “We chiropractors do some physical therapy, and physical therapists do some adjustment and mobilization. The difference is each job’s primary focus.”
Both chiropractic and physical therapy focus on helping patients not only feel better but get to a healthier state—in other words, “overall wellness,” says Greg Gillum, DPT, a physical therapist in Wenatchee, Washington. People often try chiropractic or physical therapy after other approaches don’t work.
Physical therapists often treat sports or work injuries, post-operative challenges, and even the effects of a stroke. Patients are generally referred to physical therapy for a specific issue—like restoring core strength after pregnancy or increasing mobility after ankle surgery—and are limited to treating that concern because of insurance coverage.
Chiropractors, on the other hand, “treat the whole body versus one region,” Mursu says. Chiropractors often help people with back pain and can also alleviate issues that don’t seem related to the spine, such as headache and insomnia. Why?
“We don’t just align the spine and take pain away,” Mursu explains. “We’re releasing pressure on the nervous system so the body can heal itself and function at its best.”
What Do Chiropractors and Physical Therapists Do All Day?
While both physical therapists and chiropractors help patients feel better, their day-to-day differs.
Physical Therapists’ Daily Duties:
“Physical therapists have a lot of hands-on time, meaning manual work, tissue massage, joint mobilizations, and more,” explains Gillum. They are trained to work on the body from head to toe—literally.
A physical therapist starts working with a new client by doing a “movement screen” to see how a patient moves—if the patient can’t fully extend an arm or turn their head to one side, for example. A physical therapist will not only work on the site of injury or discomfort but “look upstream” to sleuth out what caused the limitation.
So if a patient has numbness and tingling in their fingers, a physical therapist might discover that the pinched nerve in their shoulder is actually caused by too-tight neck muscles. “We look at how to get that location healthy again and why it happened so we can fix that as well,” Gillum says. “Then patients don’t have to continue seeing us forever.”
Physical therapists and patients work together as a team. They may brainstorm ways to incorporate stretching into an office job or exercise in a way that feels doable while recovering from surgery. They also test out strategies during a session, where they can get real-time feedback. For example, if an exercise is causing more pain, not less, they can adjust in the moment and try something new.
Another duty: Physical therapists emphasize educating patients on how to continue healing and maintain progress at home. “For an hour, patients have my undivided attention, but there are 23 other hours in the day,” Gillum says. “We often educate patients to engrain patterns of movement, stretch out a part of the body, or exercise they can do at home.”
Physical therapists:
Chiropractors’ Daily Duties:
Chiropractors also begin work with a new patient by doing evaluations, not only of how they move but also a full survey of health habits—their sleep, diet, exercise, and other factors that affect “whole body wellness,” Mursu says.
Chiropractors then mobilize the spine and make adjustments that realign the musculoskeletal system. This may include…
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