Southwest Acupuncture College Forms Alliance With Massage, Rolfing Schools
For months, officials at the Southwest Acupuncture College's campus in Boulder, Colo., had discussed the idea of strengthening their ties with the Boulder College of Massage Therapy and the Rolf Institute, a pair of neighboring holistic health schools. The idea gained even more momentum this past December, when the Rolf Institute relocated to a new location less than a mile from the Southwest campus. Based in part on the relocation, and because the goals of all three institutions are quite similar, administrators at Southwest and the other schools have announced the creation of an alliance, which could allow for open houses, cross-training and other benefits for students and the public.
"We're all involved in restoring health in an individual, and we all do it without the use of allopathic drugs, based on a holistic view of the human body," said Valerie Hobbs, Southwest's campus director. "There are things about being a health care practitioner that are common regardless of modality."
As part of the new alliance, students who attend one of the colleges benefit by receiving discounted services at the other two schools. At Southwest, for instance, members of the public receive acupuncture treatments from student practitioners for approximately $22. Students from the other two schools can receive the same treatments for less than half that price. Similar discounts are offered at the Rolf Institute and the massage college.
According to an article in the Boulder County Business Report, administrators at each college have discussed several other developments that could result from the alliance, including free open houses for students, shared health-fair booths and workshops, and a film series. Some officials have also discussed the possibility of all three schools being housed on the same campus, offering separate programs but sharing space, administrative staff and resources. According to Hobbs, however, that option would not be likely to occur any time soon.
"The college has a long-range plan to own its own building," Hobbs said. "... We've only been in our buildings for two years, and we're quite happy where we are."
PCOM-Chicago Hires New Director of Clinical Services
The Chicago branch of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine has hired Deepa Joshi to serve as its director of clinical services. In her new role, Joshi will oversee all clinic office staff, listen to feedback and address concerns raised by students and patients, and act as a liaison between the college's students, faculty and administration.
Joshi was born and raised in India, and graduated from Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, Karnataka, India in 1994. After spending several years working as a medical assistant, she decided to transition from working as a doctor to administration because she wanted to get a better understanding of how hospitals operate. Toward that end, she recently received a master's of science in health science management from Rush University in Chicago.
"In health care administration, it is all about customer service," Joshi said. "Administration needs to be a streamlined process so that patients can receive optimal care."
Although she has never experienced acupuncture first-hand, Joshi called it "an up-and-coming field" that is "exciting and challenging." She added that while studying at Rush University, she took a managed care course in alternative medicine and acupuncture, which she found "fascinating."
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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