Contemporary Acupuncture

Continuing education to enhance contemporary chiropractic.
How many chiropractors can predict, with certainty, what our practice environment will look like 10 to 15 years into the future?

How many chiropractors can predict, with certainty, what our practice environment will look like 10 to 15 years into the future? Imagine for a moment travelling back in time, perhaps 100 years or so, and envisioning the mosaic of chiropractic techniques and procedures that we currently have available to us. It would have been more than daunting! In fact, it would have been an impossible task for our forefathers to imagine the current scope and direction of chiropractic practice. As practising chiropractors, it is equally difficult for us to know what lies ahead, as the chiropractic paradigm unfolds into the future.

When we enrolled into our respective chiropractic colleges, it never crossed our minds that acupuncture would be a part of our day-to-day chiropractic practices. Even more surprising would have been the thought that we would, someday, be sharing our coupled clinical chiropractic and acupuncture experience as lecturers and clinical instructors in the post-graduate division of one of Canada’s leading institutions and that we would be responsible for educating medical doctors, dentists, chiropractors, physiotherapists and other regulated health professionals in Contemporary Acupuncture.  The two themes that have taken our careers into this direction are the themes of this article; the current research and the evidence-based practice of acupuncture and continuing education.  The current research surrounding acupuncture and the importance of evidence-based practice have been the two factors that have taken our careers into the direction of becoming educators in Contemporary Acupuncture. 

The Need for Practical Continuing Education
For all of us, working in today’s competitive and complex health-care environment makes continuing education much more than a mere administrative requirement by our licensing board. It is both an ethical and a professional duty we acquired the day we joined the ranks of committed, contemporary chiropractors practising in an evidence-based manner.

We all experience, in our early years in practice, the excitement and enrichment that comes whenever we are exposed to new knowledge, a new chiropractic technique system or a new practice management tool. It is true that these experiences are exciting as they enrich our intellectual universe, but soon after we implement many of these so-called “clinical truths,” reality often sets in and offers a harsh way to evaluate – and fail – many of our theoretical approaches and techniques.

Being frustrated by those patients who can’t be helped with all of the varied chiropractic techniques that we have available – despite our best-intentioned interventions – we have no choice but to challenge, and expand, our knowledge, and to look for new tools to be able to offer effective help to those who put their trust in us and our skills.

Even though each of us had a very different kind of practice  – from sports injuries, MVAs and subluxation-based practice  – all of us felt, at some point, the imperative to have a more effective tool with which to treat pain and musculoskeletal dysfunction. Then, somehow, we all found our way into the McMaster University Contemporary Acupuncture Program, and we have remained associated with it ever since.

After our extremely successful experience with integrating contemporary acupuncture into our very different chiropractic practices, we all can state that continuing education programs of a practical nature – offered by reputable teaching institutions  – are the most cost-effective way of accessing new knowledge and developing new skills.

The Benefits of Contemporary Acupuncture in Chiropractic Practice
We could now tell you about our signifi-cant income increase since offering contemporary acupuncture to our patients but we know you will be much more excited to find out about the many patients we have been able to help and about our greatly expanded ability to handle musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction as well as neurological problems.

We could also tell you about the competitive edge that contemporary acupuncture has given us over many of our colleagues and other practitioners but we know that you will care a lot more about the significantly better clinical outcomes we regularly achieve when treating our patients.

We could finally tell you that our practices are now recession and competition proof but instead we prefer to disclose to you our renewed passion and enthusiasm to both the chiropractic profession and our patients, as now we feel better equipped than ever to carry on our missions of helping others with a more specific functional approach and improved clinical efficiency.

From the beginning, we found the contemporary approach to be very easy to integrate into our practice. As well, the language and clinical concepts associated with it belong to the most updated body of knowledge in the areas of neurophysiology of pain and neuroanatomy. This greatly increases the acceptance of the intervention among patients and the ability to explain it to other health-care professionals.

CME Certification and Program Credentials
We are pleased, as committed chiropractors, all running very successful and busy practices, to have the opportunity to give back to our profession by being involved in acupuncture-related teaching and research.

On the formal academic level, the McMaster Contemporary Acupuncture Program for health-care professionals, provides a certificate for 300 CME hours, significantly above the 200 recommended by the WHO.

As a result, the program has been recognized by the American Board of Medical Acupuncture and the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture among others. As well,
it maintains institutional relationships with other university-based programs abroad, and professional medical acupuncture associations in several countries.

For more information, please go to www.acupuncturecourses.com or write to us at acupuncturecourses@mcmaster.ca.•