Non-acupuncturist medical practitioners have been trying for years to gain rights to give "acupuncture" (aka dry needling) treatments. (acupuncture is in quotations because it is definitely NOT acupuncture if the practitioner isn't trained-- which these people are not.) This is a very scary thing indeed. In the article below, the chiropractors representing their proposal argue they "learn as they go". Do you want your doctor to use you as a guinea pig so they can learn as they go? Of course not.
California acupuncturists are required to complete 4 academic years of study (2348 hours) which includes at least 800 hours of clinical experience with a minimum of 158 hours of western sciences including biology, physcis, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and 960 hours of traditional Chinese medicine theory including diagnosis, needle techniques, and herbology. Once we receive our degrees, we then have to take a very grueling licencing exam covering anything and everything we had learned over the past four years. Chiropractors, on the other hand, want to be allowed to needle people after just 300 hours of training, none of which includes clinical training.
Please educate yourselves as patients about the training your healthcare providors have received before receiving treatment. Docotors are docotors, chiropractors are chiropractors, and acupuncturists are acupuncturists, but when additional modalities that seem outside their scope of practice are involved, there can be some grey areas in regards to the training received.
-Brenda Hatley, L.Ac, Dipl. OM
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AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 11:11 a.m. Thursday, May 24, 2012
Published: 8:22 p.m. Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Chiropractors would be able to claim that they are specialists in acupuncture — placing needles in the skin to relieve pain — after 300 hours of training, according to a proposal that acupuncturists, who have many more hours of training, oppose.
The Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners, which regulates chiropractors, meets at 1 p.m. today to consider the proposed rule.
Acupuncturists and others have sent a petition to the board said to contain more than 2,000 signatures against the designation. Its opponents' chief concern is that the rule would allow the chiropractors to claim the specialty after getting less than a quarter of the 1,350 hours that acupuncturists must obtain, not counting another 450 hours in herbal studies. None of the 300 hours would have to be spent in a clinical setting — a key part of the training that acupuncturists get.
Texas chiropractors can be certified to perform acupuncture on patients if they have had just 100 hours of training. But creating a specialty designation, the Texas State Board of Acupuncture Examiners says in a letter to the chiropractic board, would undermine its licensing standards, confuse the public by putting chiropractors "on equal footing" with acupuncturists and potentially endanger patients.
Yvette Yarbrough, executive director of the chiropractic board, said that given the level of concern, it's highly possible the rule could be changed or tabled.
The issue is one of the latest turf battles in health care and another involving chiropractors. Doctors and chiropractors have been embroiled in litigation over certain procedures that physicians say should be left to medical doctors.
Critics from as far away as Europe have weighed in on the rule, which has received many more negative comments than positive ones, Yarbrough said.
"The licensure and rules committee chairmen are very much in tune with what those comments are saying," Yarbrough said. "They have raised concerns the board will take seriously."
William Morris, president and CEO of the AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine, is planning to attend the board meeting and has encouraged faculty and students to come as well.
"My concern is not hours, it's competencies," he said. "It's real easy to teach to a test so you can pass a test, but with that clinical performance requirement missing, there's no way they can guarantee public safety. And it's misleading."
Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a semiretired chiropractor in College Station who practiced for 30 years in Austin, disagrees. Chiropractors are well-trained and "were the first profession to endear and embrace acupuncture in Texas in the 1970s" — about two decades before the Legislature created the Texas State Board of Acupuncture Examiners, said Brown, a former member of the Texas Chiropractic Association's board and now a liaison between the board and its committees.
"In all of the years chiropractors have been practicing acupuncture, there have been no substantial complaints filed against a chiropractor for doing acupuncture" in Texas, Brown said. "When we get into our individual practices, you just have to learn by doing. You learn as you go. We call it ‘practice' for a reason."
Those arguments do not sit well with Wally Doggett, president of the Texas Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and owner of South Austin Community Acupuncture.
"If they wanted to raise the standard, that would be one thing," said Doggett, an organizer of the petition drive. Instead, the chiropractic board is "acting more like a booster organization than a regulatory board. ... I have not seen the acupuncture community this fired up in many, many years."
Some opponents mistakenly think chiropractors are trying to practice Chinese medicine or do acupuncture for any ailment, Yarbrough said. By law, chiropractors are authorized to treat the musculoskeletal system, the spine and nerves. Any acupuncture they do must be done in that context, Yarbrough said.
Contact Mary Ann Roser at 445-3619
If you go
The rules committee of the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners is meeting at 9 a.m. today at the Hobby Building, 333 Guadalupe St. The full board meets at 1 p.m. at the same location.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the name of the AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine.
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