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Pregnancy Massage Survey
For all of you that do Pregnancy Massage as part of your practice: Would you mind taking 1 minute to fill out a survey about you and your practice. Data will be used to help guide the APMA in it's efforts to promote Pregnancy Massage and Pregnancy Massage Therapists. Thank you.
Pregnancy Massage Practitioner Survey
Please feel free publicly comment on the survey below.
Pregnancy Massage Practitioner Survey
Please feel free publicly comment on the survey below.
Views: 458
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Vlad on
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Hey Rick,
I just did your survey and I've to run on here, but your thread grabbed my attention and the fact that you're interested in research in prenatal massage too (saw your post in Mike's group). Can you give us all a bit more info on the APMA and what is going on with research in prenatal massage?
Cheers.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on
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Hi Vlad,
Rick will also have a booth at this year's World Massage Festival in Berea, KY for anyone that would like to visit! And we are hoping Rick will share lots of research at next year's 2011 Fest at Western Carolina University outside Asheville, NC.
Rick Morgan said:Hi Vlad,
The APMA: American Pregnancy Massage Association formed about 6 months ago. Our members are Massage Therapists who have advanced training in Prenatal Massage. Our dues are very modest- we set them so that if we helped get our members even one new client they come out ahead. Our mission is to promote the use of massage by pregnant women by trained prenatal massage therapists. We do this through public education about pregnancy massage, creating standards of education for prenatal massage therapists, and promoting research in the pregnancy massage field.
Our current research agenda is to help put non massage researchers in touch with therapists who want to do research. We will be scouring the journals to create a pregnancy massage research database as well (this will take some time).
On our advisory council we have a researcher who also advices the NIH on grant allocation so we will be asking her advice on getting research grants so we can advise Massage Therapists in that area.
We are also just doing a grassroots effort to educate therapists about looking at source materials for when they write or read articles or promotional products. Much of the information out there is un-cited or based on handed down information and as such may not be accurate. There are some really well cited and written educational pieces out there as well. A prime example is "women in there first trimester can't get massage". I can't even begin to tell you howm many articles in national magazines will state this, and many therapists will too because they heard it from a teacher or other therapist. There is no research or medical reason that a women cannot get a massage in her first trimester by a trained professional if she is having an uncomplicated pregnancy. The articles will often reference another article which referenced another and then eventually end up at the source article which might be written by a massage therapist who wrote the article for her local paper as a promo piece. Not an evidence based study or source.
Once we reach a certain membership threshold we plan on sponsoring research through grants.
As for current research in progress: I am following up on a project out in Australia about Bowenwork outcomes with Pregnant women. I haven't heard back from the researcher yet, it was planned as a long term study. See mike's group about the planned research out of UNY-Albany. That's all I know about right now. TRI hasn't published anything new although they have a lot of researchers down there so something may come out soon.
We will be posting any new research information on our website as it becomes available.
Cheers
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Permalink Reply by Pamela M. King on
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Hi Rick: Just completed your survey. It sounds like the APMA is working hard to promote Pre-natal massage. Just wanted to say, good luck! Hope all the data helps the APMA.
Namaste, Pam
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Permalink Reply by Susan G. Salvo on
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I agree that there is a lot of misinformation out there. When researching first trimester information in 2005 for a project I was working on, the prevailing thought was to postpone massage at this time as this is when miscarriage occurs and it is best to be safe than sorry.
Now, the prevailing thought is that massage is postponed only if the client is experiencing abdominal cramping or vaginal bleeding as there are indicators of pregnancy complications and possible miscarriage.
Another BIG misconception that has changed in massage is cancer.
But that’s one of the reasons why we have CEUs -- to keep therapists current on changes in the field.
What is your association’s position on high risk pregnancies? Please provide a good working definition of high risk pregnancy when you reply.
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I use this definition for high risk pregnancies:
High risk pregnancies are ones that put the mother, the developing fetus, or both at higher-than-normal risk for complications during or after the pregnancy and birth. Factors that contribute to a high risk pregnancy are (then I have a list of about 12 items).
With the popularity of ART (assisted reproductive technologies), therapists are likely to encounter high risk pregnancies and these therapists need to know more.
I feel that these discussions are important because there is not a consensus on what to do. That’s why I am interested in your thoughts.
Perhaps so much depends on the health of the pregnant woman. My two last pregnancies were high risk by definition (placenta previa plus I was 38 and twins at 42). My health was good. I used massage LOTS during both pregnancies. When I asked my OB, he just looked at me and said “Whatever you want to do, I can’t hurt you.”
But I am curious why you feel advanced certification is warranted. Why not push to have this valuable information in basic training?
PS - Elaine was consulted for the section on pregnancy in the 2009 release of my patho book. I’ll send it to you later.
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Rick,
It will be great to see the results since I've often wondered about how many do prenatal massage without advanced training in it. Also, even with advanced training, what percentage don't work on people in the first trimester.
I just joined the APMA!
I think it's GREAT that there's an organization just for promoting prenatal massage and I'm pretty excited that there will be an examination of existing research done in it and more research carried out.
I've been trying to keep up with input on the high risk discussion too - good info!
Cool.....
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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Overson on
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Rick, is there another national association for pregnancy massage? I've seen them quoted in old articles but nothing on the web comes up... at least not that I can see.... just curious if you know anything about that.
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This was a question posed in an earlier thread:
"But I am curious why you feel advanced certification is warranted. Why not push to have this valuable information in basic training?"
I have thought about this too.... and here's my thoughts on it - around here (Salt Lake City, Utah) there are a several massage schools within a 20 mile radius. The two that I am well-acquainted with only include pregnancy massage as part of their "Survey of Bodywork Modalities" courses - in other words, it gets covered in one 2-hour class - along with infant massage.Having taught several of these classes myself, I would have to argue that this is nowhere near enough time to cover what a prenatal practitioner needs to know. (I tell my students that, too - that this is a crash course should they ever happen to encounter a pregnant client). The "average" person doesn't know a whole lot about the physiology of pregnancy, which I personally feel is important to know. It's hard to teach that to students that don't want to really know about it, and I think that's why most schools (that i am aware of) have a similar approach to prenatal massage - they only touch on it, like an Intro course, and then offer advanced certification.
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How many hours of pregnancy massage do you recommend schools teach?
Pregnancy massage is included in most, if not all, entry level massage textbooks.
And pregnant clients do come through our student clinics. I'm sure that is true for most schools.
Pregnancy is regarded as a normal life stage and not a pathologic condition (unless abnormalities exist and then modifications are needed as they are with ANY client, pregnant or not).
Does anyone feel that therapists should avoid pregnant women unless post-graduate hours are obtained?
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Susan G. Salvo said:How many hours of pregnancy massage do you recommend schools teach?
Pregnancy massage is included in most, if not all, entry level massage textbooks.
And pregnant clients do come through our student clinics. I'm sure that is true for most schools.
Pregnancy is regarded as a normal life stage and not a pathologic condition (unless abnormalities exist and then modifications are needed as they are with ANY client, pregnant or not).
Does anyone feel that therapists should avoid pregnant women unless post-graduate hours are obtained?
My response on Rick's survey was that I don't think most massage therapists can safely and confidently work on pregnant women without more than 2 hours of training (in my school's case) - unless the mom and babe are healthy and there are no other medical or special considerations. With some of the things I see on intake forms with my clients (who are all pregnant) I would be really nervous thinking that these women might find their way into a student clinic and a therapist would just move ahead doing massage in instances where they really ought to have medical clearance from the woman's care provider.
Now, granted, those are the exceptions, but when you work with pregnant women exclusively, you see all kinds of things :) Unless a student is well-versed in pregnancy, they may not know what to look for or what the meaning of certain terms are and may not have the confidence to ask or to tell a client who is standing there, ready for a massage, that they have a condition where it's actually not safe to proceed.
Again, that's going to be the exception, not the rule.
I think any massage therapist without extensive training will not likely seek out or feel comfortable working on pregnant women all the time, and will proceed with caution if they face a situation they are not confident with, which is prudent.
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Thank Rick.
Again, I appreciate you bringing more attention to this important topic.
Rick Morgan said:Hi Susan,
I will hold back my response until after the survey is complete. I don't want to steer the results in any way.
Susan G. Salvo said:How many hours of pregnancy massage do you recommend schools teach?
Pregnancy massage is included in most, if not all, entry level massage textbooks.
And pregnant clients do come through our student clinics. I'm sure that is true for most schools.
Pregnancy is regarded as a normal life stage and not a pathologic condition (unless abnormalities exist and then modifications are needed as they are with ANY client, pregnant or not).
Does anyone feel that therapists should avoid pregnant women unless post-graduate hours are obtained?
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AAHHHH, the question of confidence…
I struggled with this one as a student, then as a therapist, and now as an educator trying to instill confidence in my students.
In my humble opinion, confidence takes time.
No amount of hours in class will give it to you.
I wish it were that easy.
One of my instructors, Carol Kresge, said in class, “You know, it took me one year to build a clientele but 4 years to know what I was doing.” I jotted it down and read it often
Rebecca Overson said:Susan G. Salvo said:How many hours of pregnancy massage do you recommend schools teach?
Pregnancy massage is included in most, if not all, entry level massage textbooks.
And pregnant clients do come through our student clinics. I'm sure that is true for most schools.
Pregnancy is regarded as a normal life stage and not a pathologic condition (unless abnormalities exist and then modifications are needed as they are with ANY client, pregnant or not).
Does anyone feel that therapists should avoid pregnant women unless post-graduate hours are obtained?
My response on Rick's survey was that I don't think most massage therapists can safely and confidently work on pregnant women without more than 2 hours of training (in my school's case) - unless the mom and babe are healthy and there are no other medical or special considerations. With some of the things I see on intake forms with my clients (who are all pregnant) I would be really nervous thinking that these women might find their way into a student clinic and a therapist would just move ahead doing massage in instances where they really ought to have medical clearance from the woman's care provider.
Now, granted, those are the exceptions, but when you work with pregnant women exclusively, you see all kinds of things :) Unless a student is well-versed in pregnancy, they may not know what to look for or what the meaning of certain terms are and may not have the confidence to ask or to tell a client who is standing there, ready for a massage, that they have a condition where it's actually not safe to proceed.
Again, that's going to be the exception, not the rule.
I think any massage therapist without extensive training will not likely seek out or feel comfortable working on pregnant women all the time, and will proceed with caution if they face a situation they are not confident with, which is prudent.
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