• Myburgh C
• Mouton J

• Education, Professional / Denmark
• Schools, Chiropractic / Denmark
• Schools, Chiropractic / legislation and jurisprudence
• Schools, Chiropractic / organization and administration
• Schools, Chiropractic / standards

METHODS: A gatekeeper was initially interviewed, after which a snowball sampling approach led to a further 11 respondents being identified. Semistructured interviews were conducted, and computer-assisted thematic analysis was used to interpret data.

RESULTS: Seven themes emerged. Two described pertinent historical aspects during the development of the local education, 4 related to status quo issues around education at the University of Southern Denmark, and 1 explored perceived health care integration benefits attributable to the chosen model of education.

CONCLUSION: The Danish chiropractic profession's incentive to raise its legitimacy lay in the access it stood to gain, through a local education, to state-subsidized copayments. "Stakeholder behavior," "boundary work," and "countervailing powers" underscore this example of professionalization; and evidence for secondary legitimization appears evident in the third-party influences, peer association legitimacy, and disciplinary endorsement observed. Our study suggests that secondary legitimacy may serve the interests of an emergent profession in its bid to claim a position of dominance, in this instance, chiropractic.

Click on the above link for the PubMed record for this article; full text by subscription. This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher.