ACTCM Receives DAOM Program Candidacy
The American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM) in San Francisco has just had its Doctor of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine (DAOM) program considered a candidate for accreditation with the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM).
The DAOM program offers two specialties: TCM Gynecology and TCM Pain Management. Students can enhance their knowledge, skills and confidence in these two specialty areas. The DAOM offers additional in-depth skills and practical knowledge in other specific areas commonly found in TCM practice.
Students will complete their internships in the ACTCM Community Clinic, local hospitals and outpatient clinics, and with private practitioners. They also have the choice of completing some of their internship at the Shanghai University of TCM in China.
For more information, please contact the ACTCM Admissions Department at (415) 282-7600 x14 and/or ACTCM's Doctoral Program Dean Bingzeng Zou at (415) 355-1601 x16.
OCOM Awarded grant from Kaiser Permanente
Oregon College of Oriental Medicine (OCOM) was recently awarded a $20,000 grant from the Kaiser Permanente Type III fund to provide acupuncture in their two clinic locations to low-income patients at a reduced rate.
In 2009, OCOM's clinics lowered the fee for an acupuncture treatment from $36 to $22 in response to the economic downturn. The funding from Kaiser will allow OCOM to continue offering these low-income treatments by supplementing the discrepancy between the cost of providing the treatment and the significantly lower amount paid by the patient. In addition, Kaiser Permanente funding will provide a total of eight treatments over two months for 179 qualifying individuals at the substantially below-market cost of $14 per treatment.
"We will now be able to enhance our ability to offer subsidized services to meet the growing needs of low-income patients," says Tim Chapman, OCOM's Vice President of Academic Affairs. "The grant will also allow us to provide invaluable clinical experiences to student interns serving a diverse patient population, which generally suffers from complex and debilitating conditions."
ACTCM Announces New Qi Gong Program
In other ACTCM news, a new qi gong immersion program is being offered. The program offers an intimate master-student group experience over a two-year period. Students may enroll in any one of the modules offered during the first year, or enroll in the entire two-year program if they wish to become certified as qi gong exercise and prescription teachers. Students who complete the full two-year program will be certified as qi gong instructors upon passing the teacher-training exam. CEUs are available for California licensed acupuncturists.
Suzanne Friedman, LAc, DMQ (China), will be the instructor for the program. She is an acupuncturist and herbalist with extensive training in medical qi gong, both in America and at the Xiyuan Hospital in Beijing. She is the founder and head instructor of the ACTCM Yangsheng Center's qi gong program. For more information, please call (415) 282-7600 x14.
NCCAOM Announces Results Of Nationwide AOM Job Task Analysis
The National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), with assistance from Schroeder Measurement Technologies, has just released the results of its milestone national Job Task Analysis survey. The 2008 Job Task Analysis: A Report to the Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AOM) Profession is available via the NCCAOM Web site at www.nccaom.org.
The primary purpose of the survey is to provide a blueprint for the development of the NCCAOM certification examinations, which serve as a prerequisite for entry-level practice of AOM in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The survey identifies the importance and frequency of tasks performed by active NCCAOM Diplomates from various regions of the country, in different practice settings, as well as at different points in their AOM career. These results serve to validate the knowledge, skills and abilities performed by an entry-level AOM practitioner in the United States. In addition to assuring that the content for NCCAOM certification examinations is based on current practice, the survey also provides a snapshot of the demographics and characteristics of AOM practitioners certified by the NCCAOM.
For additional questions or comments regarding the survey,please e-mail executiveoffice@nccaom.org.
Five Branches Graduates First DAOMs in Chinese
Five Branches University has graduated its first class of 25 Chinese Doctors of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM). Due to the demand of the Chinese community for practitioners to learn advanced TCM in Chinese rather than translated into English, Five Branches University began offering the DAOM degree in Chinese in late 2008.
Students were able to learn from China's leading practitioners, such as Prof. Shi Xue Ming of the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in their native language. In addition, the capstone projects of the DAOM graduates will be published in both English and Chinese.
Five Branches President Ron Zaidman stated, "To serve our community of English- and Chinese-speaking practitioners is always important, and we can be proud that the ACAOM, our accreditation commission, expanded its scope to include the DAOM in languages of origin, and that an American university offered a leading program for the Chinese AOM community."
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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