Dr. Susan J. Aubuchon I have been involved in some aspect of the health care industry since I was 15 years old. At that time I volunteered in a psychiatric hospital in St. Louis, Missouri and my job was to recover patients from electro-convulsive therapy. I progressed on to working as a Unit Secretary in the same hospital until I graduated from Nursing School in 1977. I worked as a Critical Care Nurse Specialist in Cardiovascular Surgery for the next 15 years. During that time I taught a Critical Care course to new Intensive Care Unit nurses and medical physicians. I also was heavily involved in the heart transplant program in St. Louis and wrote a text detailing the nursing care of heart transplant patients which was a pivotal document moving cardiac transplantation procedures from the University hospital setting to a general hospital environment. This was the first of its kind in the nation. In the final five years of my active nursing practice, I was a Nurse Manager over two ICU's and a telemetry step-down unit. During this time, I became very aware of the insurance-driven economic pressures governing the quality of health care. We were doing "full-court-press" on patients that were well into the morbidity/mortality end of the life-continuum hallway. After providing very heroic and very expensive treatment to keep these patients alive, we would pat the patient on their saved heads, and send them home sick because their insurance wouldn't approve a longer hospital recovery period. This is the point in history when the 'home health nursing' businesses came into existence. And, that is when I decided to go back to school and learn how to keep patient's on the wellness end of life's hallway. It has been 17 years now since I began my practice here in Lewiston, Idaho. I have maintained my RN license, I am a licenced Chiropractic physician, a licensed Certified Acupuncturist, a doctor in Naturopathic Medicine, Certified in Applied Neurology and Foundational Nutrition as well as certified in Prolozone therapy. Every day repeatedly demonstrates to me that Chiropractic medicine Ð functional medicine is, and should always be, the first step in any patient's life. We focus our energies on helping the body heal itself. Chiropractic makes a significant and many times, life-altering improvement in many patients' lives. We see it in our practices every day. It has been my privilege and honor to practice Chiropractic and be a member in this community of healers.