Acupuncture Continuing Education Online Courses
Educational opportunities in Chinese Medicine for acupuncture and herbal medicine exist for acupuncture professionals. Online learning with open source solutions allows medical professionals to access data to better serve patients. Acupuncturists in California (CA) need 50 units of continuing education credit every two years whereas the NCCAOM requires 60 units (PDAs) every 4 years for national diplomate certification. Florida and Texas also require special continuing education credits for acupuncturists. Providing these courses should ultimately lead to improved patient care.
Acupuncturists encounter several difficulties with acupuncture continuing education. Firstly, location- many courses are not available in Iowa, Wyoming and other sparsely populated areas. However, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, Austin, and Boston offer many courses. Next, quality of courses is of issue. Not all courses are clinically applicable to the acupuncturist. For example, an acupuncturist may already know the material or the material is not applicable to a specific acupuncture practice. Next, it can be costly to travel to a course. Finally, topics of interest that meet an acupuncturist's needs may be hard to come by in remote areas. In addition, topics relating to scope of practice are of great import. For example, in a recent meeting by the California Acupuncture Board, there is mention of moving to strike certain topics and procedures from official approval from California acupuncture ceu courses. Course material perceived as extending beyond the scope of practice of an acupuncturist was suggested as inappropriate.
This is a legitimate concern, however, acupuncturists have suffered several setbacks in recent years regarding scope of practice. For example, magnets were cited in California legislation to be included in an acupuncturists scope of practice but never made it officially. Cold laser stimulation was also cited for inclusion into the acupuncturist scope of practice. However, then Gov. Gray Davis did not sign the law and it did not pass. To exclude cold laser education based on its exclusion from scope of practice may be inappropriate as it may be included at a later date. Acupuncture ceus, therefore, are best left open to legitimate forms of medicine which relate to the general practice of medicine. In California, CSOMA has looked into these matters over the years in an effort to protect the treatment and application modalities of the acupuncture practice.
New Acupuncturist License Requirements Developing
The NCCAOM now requires a 4 hours safety and ethics course every four years for license re-certification for acupuncturists. Soon, the NCCAOM is again changing requirements for acupuncture CEUs. Online courses will be required to make a review of test answers in short written form in prior to administering a test. This, according to the NCCAOM, is to re-enforce learning and memory retention. Note: acupuncture CEUs are referred to as PDAs by the NCCAOM. Also, the California Acupuncture Board has recently considered requiring safety and ethics courses for acupuncture ceus. No action has been taken by the California Acupuncture Board. However, they have continually made more stringent standards over the years for acupuncture license certification. |