A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Jennifer Stone, MSOM, LAc
Jennifer Stone is a clinician scientist educator and faculty member in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine; and serves as co-chair of the Indiana Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health. Her clinical training is in acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and she has 34 years of experience treating patients in the clinic. Jennifer also has 15 years of experience serving as editor in chief and senior editor of four international biomedical journals, and is currently the EIC of Medical Acupuncture, published by MaryAnn Liebert/SAGE.