Please allow me to re-introduce myself…I’m Dr. Lauren Clum, and I’m super excited to be stepping into the role of Dean of Clinical Operations! I started at Life West in March of 2018, 13 years after my own graduation, and 11 years in private practice. I was invited to take over as the upper cervical mentor when Dr. Louis Tiscareno retired…which was a huge honor, as he was one of my mentors in upper cervical work. As an upper cervical chiropractor, it’s extremely important to me that students have the opportunity to learn from a DC that practices the way they intend to. And as the universe generally works, the invitation came at the perfect time, as I’d been seeking a transition in my professional service and just hadn’t yet defined what that looked like.
To date, my service in chiropractic has been through knee chest upper cervical specific chiropractic with The Specific Chiropractic Centers. In my practice, I implemented business and practice systems based on the principles focused on building relationships in and with our communities, employing a high-fee, medium-volume, cash-based, and systems-oriented formula.
Practicing in this way for over a decade has afforded me incredible business and entrepreneurial acumen and success, as well as clinical experience. I feel that this is a valuable combination of expertise; in fact, I feel that one of my main strengths in being here at Life West has to help interns integrate their immense intellect into the practical application of actual patient care, which in all reality, requires way more connection ability than intelligence. As such, much of my feedback and advice is centered on fostering connection. The other part of the success equation that I’m passionate about is clinical competence…while interns don’t have to do what I do, I do expect them to understand WHY they’re doing something and to be very good at doing it.)
While these key ideals have been developed and refined by my years of clinical practice, they’ve been softened and polished by my more recent years as a mama. When Kaiya was about a year old, she was diagnosed with Angelman Syndrome, a neurogenetic developmental disorder that results from random and spontaneous deletion of a handful of genes on one of her little chromosomes. So while parenthood is challenging in the best of scenarios, this bump in our road turned my world upside down and has forced me to analyze, question and take inventory on just about everything I’ve known and understood in my life to date. As such, Kaiya has taken the top spot on my list of priorities and is the main focus in my life. It’s been a transition to shift my career to the backseat of my life, and this position at Life West truly allows me the opportunity to maximize my professional service AND serve my favorite girl.
Over the past three years, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working as a mentor, and I trust all of my experience to date has prepared me to step into this new role and expand my service at Life West and in chiropractic as Dean of Clinical Operations.
First published on Life West Magazine
