The year of the Dragon is here. As fierce, mystical and wonderful as the dragon may be – 2011 was very exciting. Here is a recap, along with latest happenings in the profession.
Plenary Session A Success
In mid-November, I attended the third plenary session of the Quality and Safety TAG (Technical Advisory Group) under the auspices of the World Health Organization.
This tag is discussing surgical procedures, other medical procedures, and medication and the real and/or potential harm to the patients. The task undertaken of this meeting was to look at 1,600 codes in ICD-10 discuss add, change, delete or modify the code.
On the second day we had completed the section on surgical and moved into medical procedures. When we came to a certain area, I raised my hand and recommended that this would be the place to add acupuncture. To my overwhelming joy – every one of the members agreed. We also got manipulative therapies included – Tui-na being in this category.
In the next Category of medications – I had the honor of adding herbal medicine, homeopathy and traditional medicine.
I want to thank both Dr. John Chen of Evergreen Herbs and Bill Egloff of Crane Herbs for their help and support. This information went into the first drafts being sent to WHO. This is a great start for this medicine being able to take its place in the global health care system.
Earlier in the fall, both Dr. Kory Ward-Cook and I did a one day turn-around to Washington D.C. Our destination was the office of Dr. Josephine Briggs, head of NCCAM (National Center for Complementary Medicine, which is a part of NIH (National Institute of Health).
We went to meet and greet on behalf of the AOM community. As a result, the NCCOM web site references licensed acupuncture not just medical acupuncture.
Another step forward
In other news, the ISO-TAG-249 is the other international group discussing Quality and Safety. The Working Group for forming International Standard for acupuncture needles has met and the work is progressing. The Working Group of herbs met in Beijing with Christine Chang and Jason Wu attending from the US. I have been elected to the President's Advisory Group representing the U.S. representing the U.S.
The First Draft of ICTM to be included in ICD-11 has gone up for all to see. So, I encourage you to log on and take a look at http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd11/browse/f/en.
Scholarship Available
Attention AOM Students! The Trudy McAllister Scholarship is available. This is an annual scholarship which gives $2000 to students of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in ACAOM accredited or candidate schools working toward their degree in Acupuncture or degree in Oriental Medicine. For further details, please visit their web site www.trudymcalisterfoundation.org.
New Degree Program at PCOM
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM) announced on November 30th that it will begin offering a unique holistic nursing Bachelor of Science Completion Program in Holistic Nursing through its New York Campus. This is the first bachelor degree nursing program within a CAM school in the country.
The program was developed in consultation with Carla Mariano, EdD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAIM, who also initiated the holistic nurse practitioner program at New York University and is past-president of the American Holistic Nurses Association. Mariano told the Integrator that the program is particularly timely as the nursing profession has a growing commitment to establish a bachelors' level as the basic educational standard for professional nursing. "BSN in 10" refers to the pending legislation requiring associate degree registered nurses to obtain the baccalaureate degree in nursing within 10 years of initial licensure. The states of New York and New Jersey each have legislation promoting this change. This direction for the nursing field was propelled by the October 2010 Future of Nursing report from the Institute of Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dr. Shi Xue Min
The CEU seminar on stroke rehabilitation acupuncture in Santa Monica, California, hosted by Emperor's College on November 19 and 20 was hailed a resounding success by attendees. The exclusive U.S. seminar featured the honorable Dr. Shi Xue Min, also known as the 'Father of Acupuncture'.
With over 200 practitioners and AOM students attending from all over the country, it was the largest class Dr. Shi Xue Min has ever held in the United States. Attendees included renowned acupuncturists as well as distinguished Emperor's College faculty members.
Dr. Shi lectured on Xing Nao Kai Qiao stroke rehabilitation and prevention therapy, an effective acupuncture protocol for stroke patients he developed in the early 1970s at Tianjin Hospital in China.
Make sure to check out an exclusive interview Acupuncture Today did with Dr. Shi Xue Min soon on [url=http://www.acupuncturetoday.com]http://www.acupuncturetoday.com[/url] this month.
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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