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.
Mark McKenzie, LAc
Mark S. McKenzie is dean of the Minnesota College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minn. He may be contacted at mmckenzie@nwhealth.edu.