Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge

Comment

Comment by Keith Eric Grant on October 26, 2009 at 12:16pm

Mike said:

Well, from what I saw of the CA plan you are promoting, it would cost easily that much money and years, depending on scheduling to complete the advanced training. You have level 1, level 2 and so on. This separates therapists too much in my opinion. Class warfare in a profession weakens it as a whole, to me.

Mike, again you confuse providing an example with promoting. The McKinnon curricula is an example of a modular plan of teaching. The levels have to do with prerequisites, as you find with any normal college curricula. One does not waltz (or foxtrot either for that matter) into an advanced class without having completed the prerequisite classes at McKinnon or the equivalent at another school.

Scheduling is not the issue you make of it. Many of our students are doing career transitions and have additional full time jobs and often family responsibilities. The classes are also on a basis of pay-as-you-go, which moderates the cost as compared to those schools that have to administer for financial aid and support the staff for this on overhead. More often, students available time is more of a scheduling consideration then class availability. Such a system may not be the best solution for everyone, but it well suits the majority of our student's needs. My rough estimate is that a student who can afford two-nights a week from job and family takes about a year to complete 250 hours. One can increase that somewhat (and we do) by tossing in a few weekend days within each quarter for some of the longer term, advanced curricula.

Comment by rudy m smith on October 26, 2009 at 12:11pm

Here is a cart in front of the horse. We are setting standards for new students but we don't have any real standards for the people teaching the students. I can't tell you how many highly educated (1200 hours plus) students with lot's of C.E.U's that have given me and some of my clients at best a worthless massage. Before I rent a room to a therapist I have them demonstrate their skills and I ask them simple yet related questions about what they are doing and why. The answers like the techniques are poor at best. Going back and talking to some of their instructors I have learned why. People are teaching skills who have little practical experience and many times could never get their own practise(s) off the ground. just a thought.

Comment by Carl W. Brown on October 26, 2009 at 11:29am

Bert, “Does anyone have any suggestions in regard to "someone", or an existing committee, or forming a committee that would tackle the problem of 'defining the specific target outcomes of the training'?” Before anyone can deal with this we need to clarify the intent of the standard. For example the muscles that a person needs to know are to ones that they specifically work independently of others. If they keep notes, read medical reports, or communicate with other professional who are co-treating then they also need to know their names.

My anatomy training was excellent. It consisted of a series of courses with each course covering the muscles of a specific joint. You learned the muscle by grouping and when you were done you built a clay model of the joint so that you get a 3D idea of the interrelation of the muscles and joint. You studied each muscle on different people and felt the differences and similarities. You also worked on models with specific problems. There was no grading and when you were done with the series you too them all over again until you and your teacher felt you could move on. There we also workshops to deal with specific topics. I don’t know how to test this knowledge because it was more than knowing the names, it was palpation skills, manipulation techniques and the general “feel” of what a muscle is “Happy’ to use the correct medical term. It also included joints their positioning, articulation, ligaments, ligament sheaths, genetic differences, muscle textural feel, positioning and facial adhesions.

As you can guess this sort of training does not fit into a postsecondary school accreditation scheme very well any more than energy work does.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on October 26, 2009 at 11:03am

Keith,

I agree, I think we still have "years" before these issues get better. There will always be delays between regulation, implementation and marked success.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on October 26, 2009 at 11:00am

Bert,

The committee is the BOK. Have you sent them this question?

Comment by Bert Davich on October 26, 2009 at 10:58am

Hi Carl,
I receive massage in the student clinic at our center myself and give them feedback that acts to supplement what the instructors are teaching them. I think this is a great practice and useful to the students which are required to complete 600 hours at the center where I practice.

However, until the specific target outcomes are defined, there will be no standard measuring stick to which we can refer when determining what training is necessary for minimum competency.

I think Keith defined the problem. My call for suggestions was the next logical step to consider the potential usefulness of that idea.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on October 26, 2009 at 10:58am

Carl,

What you just describe, very well I might add, is what you already have in place in CA. The BOK will not separate bodywork and massge or any specific modalities. The BOK will deal with all work, that it deems is done by a "massage therapist", that they deem are massage therapists. So your plan is not going to work. Even therapist that are writing me, disagree with tiers.

This situation could be solved simply by the medical industry creating a position inside itself, train those qualified and the issue would be mute.

The whole thing is because some therapists wish to enter the medical aspects and others don't feel they should be subjected to the same rules when they have no desire to learn or be subjected to these changes. But so many change their mind and later decide they do, Alot of students say they will never do insurance billing and a year later, there they are, accepting insurance.

Comment by Carl W. Brown on October 26, 2009 at 10:46am

Bert, one of the things they do at the center where I work is offer support for students by having professional volunteer to be massage subjects for their practice sessions. The advantage is that they can get feedback from a variety of professionals. Just practicing on lay people is that they can develop bad habits that are difficult to correct later.

Comment by Bert Davich on October 26, 2009 at 10:29am

Regarding Keith's comment:
"But, we only have empty opinions and can can't discuss real tradeoffs between time, content, and methods of presentation and reenforcement unless we have defined the specific target outcomes of the training. I've yet to see that well-done in general"

Does anyone have any suggestions in regard to "someone", or an existing committee, or forming a committee that would tackle the problem of 'defining the specific target outcomes of the training'?

It seems to me this would be a logical step if that concept is to be seriously considered.

Comment by Keith Eric Grant on October 26, 2009 at 10:11am

Greg Jones

In my opinion 250 hours is inadequate training.

Hours are not training but simply a vehicle in which training can occur. We only can discuss if training is adequate if we have a job description with a task breakdown as a benchmark. If 700 hours or 2000 hours doesn't teach the required competencies, then it is inadequate. If 250 hours does, then it IS adequate. But, we only have empty opinions and can can't discuss real tradeoffs between time, content, and methods of presentation and reenforcement unless we have defined the specific target outcomes of the training. I've yet to see that well-done in general.

Increasingly, defense applications of training, business, and health care are looking at individual competency profiles and learning gap analysis. What tasks are within a person's current scope of competency? What additional task are required by the job? What training will fill the gaps. Tools and data-handling techniques are being created by consortium that should create some change, within the next few years, comparable to the change the internet brought to communication. The focus out there now is education and training and a lot of resources are being poured into it.

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