Crowdsourcing this request, as I dont have time within the designated window to do it myself. Besides, all of us know more than any one of us, and were all interested in advocating for good information in massage, so crowdsourcing is the right and appropriate way to do this in any case. I got an answer from Donna Sarvello about what the NCB is planning to do about the dubious courses they currently approve for massage CE (reproduced below). Over the next couple of days, I am working full 8-hour shifts at The Seattle Stand Down. Ill be providing chair massage to veterans at risk for homelessness. So I wont be on FB very much over the next couple of days, because real life. What Id like to ask you to do is this: 1. Can you think of any general principles that CE courses should meet, in order to be approved? I propose the following; please let me know if you think of any more: A. At a minimum, CE courses should be 1) directly connected to massage itself, and 2) consistent with state-of-the-art knowledge in the field it makes reality claims about, and 3) eligible to be taught at an accredited post-secondary institution. So energy medicine CE courses would not be eligible on any of those counts. First of all, they are not massage, since energy medicine is neither necessary nor sufficient to practice massage. Second, it contradicts centuries of physics knowledge, and we are not in a position to claim that we know physics better than the physicists do. Certainly, there is always a physicist here or there that will endorse it, but by state-of-the-art knowledge in the field, we mean the majority of physicists, not lone advocates who reject consensus knowledge. Third, if an accredited post-secondary institution tried to teach energy medicine as fact, it would--rightly--lose its accreditation, once the accrediting body became aware of it, because it is an obsolete model that has been replaced with better knowledge in the intervening centuries. B. Given the wide-spread demonstration on the Internet of how many MTs are graduating and going into practice without mastering basic knowledge, we ask that you reconsider your policy against approving courses on basic material. If an MT is practicing without a solid knowledge of foundational anatomy and physiology or ethics, it is ultimately the client who bears the burden of that gap in the MTs knowledge. Repairing that deficit in knowledge--even though ideally, it should have been done in their MT education--can only benefit the client, and so it is a worthy and appropriate mission for massage CE. C. Since there are a lot of vendors who want to profit from selling information, regardless of its factual truth or falsehood in reality, we advocate that NCB explicitly commit to protecting the profession of massage and our clients from misinformation, and to evaluate all courses submitted to them for approval in that light. 2. Do you see any specific reasons why particular courses that have been approved in the past should not make the cut this time around? For example: Biblical Anatomy is not an appropriate course for massage CE, because: 1) If it is taught as literal fact, then it is an obsolete model that has been replaced by better knowledge. It is factually false that men have one fewer rib than women because Eve was made from Adams rib, or that humans were specially created apart from animals in one day. 2) If it is not taught as literal fact, but as one previous model in the history of comparative anatomical ideas, then it is not close enough to massage itself to meet the requirement of being directly connected. ====== This is very important: I expect all of us to follow the principle of charity and to demonstrate kindness in our criticisms. We have an opportunity to register real problems that we see with the NCB, who has pledged to listen to us. Calm, fact-based observations why a class does not meet the mission of providing high-quality CE to MTs are what we need to provide here. We are not going to be inflammatory or snarky about this in the least. We are going to calmly and patiently outline our reasons in detail, along with the facts that support our reasons. We are not going to refight historical battles. Instead, we are going to make our current excellent case for high quality in massage CE. Saturday morning, Ill compile all the comments, credited by name unless you specifically tell me you want to be anonymous (PM me in that case), and Ill send it to Donna to bring to the attention of the Board for the meeting on Tuesday. ====== Dear Ravensara, Thank you for your inquiry. You may know that NCB formulated a think tank earlier this year including Sandy Fritz and other industry leaders to discuss categorizing continued education classes. Our plan is to put this work out to the profession/stakeholders for comment in the next quarter. So Ravensara, there will be ample opportunity to provide us feedback. Over the last year, with our new collaborative leadership strategy, we have sought to listen to the profession and so some of the questions you ask are ones that our profession as well as many others in the integrative medicine or the conventional medical world still grapple with. As for NCB, we want to hear from you. If you can send me a list of the modalities that are evidence based, I can liaise with the Chair to bring it to the board. The next board meeting is next Tuesday. Leena Guptha, the Chair, gathers all materials for the other board members a week before, so please send me documentation on evidence based modalities and I will pass it on immediately. Thank you so much for reaching out. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Donna Sarvello, VP of Educational Support
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:48:00 +0000
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