doctorate, etc.

[Guest guest]

I spent a while comparing:

 

1. medical acupuncturists to licensed acupuncturists,

http://www.pulsemed.org/medicalacupuncture.htm

2. non-physician acupuncturists doing Chinese medicine to physicians doing

Western medicine

(sorry, no link)

3. non-physician acupuncturists doing Chinese medicine to chiro's...

http://www.dcdoctor.com/pages/rightpages_allaboutchiro/education.html

 

If you look at a chart of our educational hours, you'll see that we don't do

the same number of hours that chiro's and Western physicians do. The need

for more hours to reach the doctorate level makes sense to

me just from that perspective. It wouldn't be fair to them to just give us

doctorates for a Masters number of hours.

 

But there are other reasons too...

 

We can't fit more hours into the already crowded Masters level education.

Yet:

 

* We generally learn just one kind of acupuncture (zang-fu), and not others-

japanese, tong, nan jing, five element (if you go to a 5E school, not sure

if you only learn 5E acu or what), etc. We may get a survey or intro to

others, that's all. Japanese acu was an elective and not covered by Fin Aid

at PCOM.

 

* Many acupuncturists are not learning Chinese herbal medicine in depth.

Historically, CM has been mostly herbal. Here in the west, acupuncture gets

the spotlight (See Unschuld and Scheid for history). How many

acupuncturists can write a personalized raw herb rx for a pt. based on their

pattern discrim, symptoms, etc.? Most rely on pre-formulated herbs because

of time, under-education, not thinking it makes that much difference (I'm

guessing about the reasons there)

 

* We get minimal Western medical education- perhaps not enough to think in

both paradigms- which is required if you want to refer out when you need to-

some of the red flag sxs in WM are normal and ok in CM- in CA, we can order

lab tests, etc., but if you want to be primary care like that, you have to

educate yourself to a large extent, and your academic credentials won't

reflect that.

 

* We don't learn the classics- I don't think they're even all translated

yet. Without translators, we won't get there. Without the classics, we're

not even standing on the shoulders of the CM giants- we're just elementary

educated... yet we still have questions and speculations... and no source to

return to. Or we rely on those who come from China... it's messy. And

there's a whole branch of CM integrating with WM in China, for which we have

no books or articles translated.

 

Those are a few areas off the top of my head in which we need more work, but

there's no room in the Master's degree. So those are more reasons why a

Doctoral degree.

 

But I'll tell you what I'd really like to see:

 

TCM HOSPITALS and RESIDENCIES where CM graduates get PAID just like in

Western medicine.

 

B

 

 

 

Brian Benjamin Carter, M.Sci., L.Ac.

http://www.pulsemed.org/briancarterbio.htm

Acupuncturist & Herbalist

Editor, The Pulse of Oriental Medicine

Columnist, Acupuncture Today

(619) 208-1432 San Diego

(866) 206-9069 x 5284 Tollfree Voicemail

 

The PULSE of Oriental Medicine

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> Message: 2

> Mon, 26 May 2003 12:13:12 -0000

> " acududeman " <acududeman

> Re: Acupuncture- What and How

>

> Consumers do not care how much education we have. Increasing

> education will only reduce the number of people who will be able to

> afford to go into the profession, and increase the costs for the

> consumer.

> I am fully in favor of every state changing its laws so that licensed

> acupuncturists can call themselves " OMD " or " DOM " , but why increase

> the educational standards? Tens of thousands of practitioners have

> been trained with the " Masters degree level " as the educational

> standard. Now this is not enough?

> Does anybody feel that Chinese medicine is not primary care? Do we

> not excel at treating the conditions that people see their primary

> care physicians for? Are we currently not as qualified and prepared

> to treat as primary care physicians? Will a few more science classes

> make someone such a better acupuncturist that the rest of us can

> serve as their assistants?