Massage Should Not Be Licensed!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gloria Coppola on November 4, 2009 at 9:17pm

According to the massage survey currently 78% feel we should be licensed FYI

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Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on November 4, 2009 at 9:23pm

Thanks!

Gloria Coppola said:

According to the massage survey currently 78% feel we should be licensed FYI

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Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on November 5, 2009 at 12:50pm

Howard, the first draft of the MTBOK BOK is not a BOK for two reasons. 1) the KSAs has no level of competency ascribed to each KSA. 2) The point of a BOK is to develop a concise model where you have to meet 100% of the KSAs to the designated competency. To point of a BOK to make sure that you meet all the requirements in the most cost effective way not spending time on non-essential training. To be valid the BOK must be objectively tied to performance.

I believe that a real BOK would be invaluable to this profession and we would see an improvement in training and education. So far this is just a shopping list open to individual interpretation. I believe the effort can be salvaged but if let like this it will perpetuate the arbitrary testing and licensing we have today.

I also believe we need two standards. One for minimum basic Swedish where we look at real cases of harm and the basic essentials to do Swedish. Then we need a higher standard for thouse who ascribe to the title “Massage Therapist” This will add therapeutic skills but will be a more difficult standard in that therapist take different approaches to therapeutic work some of which are mutually exclusive. You cannot train someone to have the sensitivity to be an animal trainer and also work in a slaughter house. I am a medical intuitive and had to actually unlearn my Swedish training to learn to do my trade. I spoke the other day to another touch based therapy teacher who commented that she cannot train massage therapists so in licensed state they must practice outside of the law and that is wrong.

Putting together a real BOK will help us better understand what is massage and what is non-massage bodywork and make both better.

These unjustified requirements put us in the sights of PTs and chiropractors because we have not establishes massage as a unique and justified field that is very different from these other practices. We can set titles and certifications at a higher level and make them mean more because they are voluntary but we need to prove the fundamental skills in an objective way. Our current NCE MBLEx tests do not correspond to actual objectively measurable performance. Some of the questions may cover essentials but other questions cover material not essential to practice at a minimal level an as such dilute the results to the point of being meaningless.


Howard Ross Nemerov said:

Mike: As a rehab professional with 20 years in the business, I can aver that the BOK project concerns me greatly. The draft contains so many "basic" requirements that one might as well just attend PT college and be done with it. My greatest concern is that if we try to compete with PTs we will lose in the market.

For one thing, they have more political influence and contribute far more money to federal election campaigns than massage and bodywork professionals. (If anybody thinks this is irrelevant, spend some time at Open Secrets and then look at which legislation gets passed, and you will see a positive correlation between campaign contributions and congressional support for pet legislation. And they try to infer that WE are prostitutes?)

For another, if we try to become Me Too Physical Therapists, we lose our own basis for existing as a free-standing profession. I have successful professional associations with PTs, and we respect our scopes of practice. A clearer differentiation between those scopes actually improves our relations. Many of the BOK “basics” are a dangerous waste of time.

Licensing, particularly national licensing, will do us far more harm than good…except for those who wangle a new job as grand pubas in the new bureaucracy that the rest of us will pay for through licensing fees. These schemes, over time, become exclusionary rather than inclusive. History teaches that power corrupts, but new bureaucracies always start out with a “good” reason: protect public safety, for the children, etc. Unfortunately, it ends with the wealthy and powerful few ruling over the not-so-fortunate many.

I am interested in writing about this at my national Neuromuscular Therapy Examiner column. Anybody who wants to weigh in, please contact me.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on November 5, 2009 at 1:00pm

Hi Howard,

Without licensure as Carl noted, PT's and Chiros will continue to whittle on massage therapy scope of practice. ANd as Keith noted it only took their lobby effoerts, one day, to take away some of your ROM abilities. Contiued argument for licensure at this point in CA is pointless as the legislature probably won't setup another budgeted board to represent massage.

But Carl and and those who agree with him are dreaming if they think states, already licensed are going to regress. Therapists want to protect the rights they have gained, not lose them.Read Keith's articles he sent in and get the whole picture.

Carl W. Brown said:

Howard, the first draft of the MTBOK BOK is not a BOK for two reasons. 1) the KSAs has no level of competency ascribed to each KSA. 2) The point of a BOK is to develop a concise model where you have to meet 100% of the KSAs to the designated competency. To point of a BOK to make sure that you meet all the requirements in the most cost effective way not spending time on non-essential training. To be valid the BOK must be objectively tied to performance.

I believe that a real BOK would be invaluable to this profession and we would see an improvement in training and education. So far this is just a shopping list open to individual interpretation. I believe the effort can be salvaged but if let like this it will perpetuate the arbitrary testing and licensing we have today.

I also believe we need two standards. One for minimum basic Swedish where we look at real cases of harm and the basic essentials to do Swedish. Then we need a higher standard for thouse who ascribe to the title “Massage Therapist” This will add therapeutic skills but will be a more difficult standard in that therapist take different approaches to therapeutic work some of which are mutually exclusive. You cannot train someone to have the sensitivity to be an animal trainer and also work in a slaughter house. I am a medical intuitive and had to actually unlearn my Swedish training to learn to do my trade. I spoke the other day to another touch based therapy teacher who commented that she cannot train massage therapists so in licensed state they must practice outside of the law and that is wrong.

Putting together a real BOK will help us better understand what is massage and what is non-massage bodywork and make both better.

These unjustified requirements put us in the sights of PTs and chiropractors because we have not establishes massage as a unique and justified field that is very different from these other practices. We can set titles and certifications at a higher level and make them mean more because they are voluntary but we need to prove the fundamental skills in an objective way. Our current NCE MBLEx tests do not correspond to actual objectively measurable performance. Some of the questions may cover essentials but other questions cover material not essential to practice at a minimal level an as such dilute the results to the point of being meaningless.


Howard Ross Nemerov said:

Mike: As a rehab professional with 20 years in the business, I can aver that the BOK project concerns me greatly. The draft contains so many "basic" requirements that one might as well just attend PT college and be done with it. My greatest concern is that if we try to compete with PTs we will lose in the market.

For one thing, they have more political influence and contribute far more money to federal election campaigns than massage and bodywork professionals. (If anybody thinks this is irrelevant, spend some time at Open Secrets and then look at which legislation gets passed, and you will see a positive correlation between campaign contributions and congressional support for pet legislation. And they try to infer that WE are prostitutes?)

For another, if we try to become Me Too Physical Therapists, we lose our own basis for existing as a free-standing profession. I have successful professional associations with PTs, and we respect our scopes of practice. A clearer differentiation between those scopes actually improves our relations. Many of the BOK “basics” are a dangerous waste of time.

Licensing, particularly national licensing, will do us far more harm than good…except for those who wangle a new job as grand pubas in the new bureaucracy that the rest of us will pay for through licensing fees. These schemes, over time, become exclusionary rather than inclusive. History teaches that power corrupts, but new bureaucracies always start out with a “good” reason: protect public safety, for the children, etc. Unfortunately, it ends with the wealthy and powerful few ruling over the not-so-fortunate many.

I am interested in writing about this at my national Neuromuscular Therapy Examiner column. Anybody who wants to weigh in, please contact me.

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Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on November 5, 2009 at 1:14pm

Gloria, what does the figure actually mean? I think that most people in this business feel that marketing would be easier if this business had more public respect. I agree, but I don’t think that licensing is the answer. We heap on more education without looking at the quality of the education or what training actually leads to better performance.

The problem with this field is that we need to accommodate a wide variety of modalities that have very little in common with each other so a common BOK is almost nothing at all. If we spread the standard of excellence all over the map with have no standard at all.

We need to pick one standard to call “Massage Therapy” and let other practice differently will possibly high standards for each of their modalities, just that they are not “Massage Therapists”. This is the way you build public respect when a person can really tell the difference in a session when the go to a “Massage Therapist” not someone just getting by or practicing a totally different for of bodywork.

I believe that we need to throw out the standard of hours because that only relates to cost not proficiency. It encourages schools to hire under qualified teachers just to make the hours standard. Instead we need to make the education cost effective and not graduate students until they meet the standards of performance. Then we will have respect.


Gloria Coppola said:

According to the massage survey currently 78% feel we should be licensed FYI

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